Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan has encouraged Lloyds Bank staff facing redundancy to find new career directions.

Lloyds Bank International, which currently employs around 400 staff in the island, said last week that 120 roles would be lost.

Mr Cannan said: ’It’s not ideal timing by any means, (but) the important thing is to help individuals transition into new roles.

’I’ve spent a lot of time in my career working in the recruitment industry - yes these are difficult days, but for (these) individuals this can be a turning point in their lives to find perhaps new career directions, to go and do something different that they’ve always wanted to do.

The redundancies come after the 2019 closure of the Lloyds branches in Peel and Castletown, as well as last year’s closure of the Isle of Man Bank branches in those towns.

Asked if he then thought banking was declining in general, Mr Cannan said: ’I think banking is restructuring.

’You can’t avoid this digitalisation, this move away from individuals (employees) in the bank processing transactions, to the customer processing their own transactions - so that is bound to have an impact.

’But there’s always going to be a need for banking, and there will also be opportunities.’

After it was pointed out that this represented another bank citing a move to online services, and that not everyone uses mobile banking, Mr Cannan was asked if the industry, and in turn the government, was ignoring these people.

He responded: ’No, I don’t think the government is ignoring them.’

The minister added: ’We are working to try to understand what we need to do to support our local economy and our local people on the ground in terms of cash availability - but more importantly to have some access to a financial institution to be able to conduct their business.

’And I think from an institution’s perspective that it’s important that they keep representation on the ground.’