Barclays to close bulk of retail units

Barclays Bank is scrapping ten of its 13 retail marketing divisions in a restructure which will focus activity on customers rather than products.

The bank denies this will lead to widespread redundancies, claiming only a handful of marketing jobs will be lost.

The marketing divisions devoted to loans, life and pension products, savings, investment products, mortgages, current accounts, new product development, general insurance, wealthy customers and offshore banking are to be scrapped. They will be replaced by four new retail marketing divisions dedicated to “populations of customers”.

Allan Silverman, Barclays managing director for the new personal customers division, says: “Under the old structure, customers were approached many times by different Barclays marketing departments. Now customers will only be targeted by one, or at the most two. They will also see a more coherent brand.”

The new marketing divisions are still being finalised. They will be dedicated to personal customers, small businesses, customer segmentation and wealth management – headed by Silverman, Paul Myers, Chris Balmer and John Church respectively.

Each comes from a top marketing position within the company and reports to Ian Richardson, Barclays managing director for retail customers.

Silverman says the other former marketing directors of the scrapped divisions are all working in senior positions within the new marketing structure. A Barclays spokeswoman says: “The total number of marketing roles within Barclays’ retail operation will not be substantially reduced by the restructure. It is unlikely to be much more than ten.”

Barclays has about 400 staff in its retail marketing departments and recently announced it is to cut 7,000 jobs across all divisions.

B2, Barclaycard and Barclays’ marketing services division will continue to work as standalone divisions within the retail operation.

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