Societe Generale to Cut 3,700 Headcounts to Merge with Its Unit Credit du Nord

Fazzaco learned that the French bank Societe Generale is intended to launch a new retail bank in the country by merging with its unit Credit du Nord, this plan will resulted in 3,700 losses from 2023 to 2025.

Reportedly, through the merger, Societe Generale aims to create a single bank with branch network, one headquarters and one IT system serving approximately 10 million clients. Meanwhile, it is aiming for the total number of its work staff at 25,000, which means that 3,700 workers will be unemployed between 2023 to 2025. The job cuts will come about through natural attrition, estimated at 1,500 per year.

Furthermore, the French bank will continue to make new appointments during this period, after 1,400 hires on permanent contracts by the end of 2021. The IT overhaul will commence in H1 2023.

The goal of this strategy is to ensure more efficient end-to-end handling of the bank’s clients’ requests, according to Societe Generale.

"The shift from two IT systems to one, combined with greater investment in data and artificial intelligence, will enable us to speed up the digital transformation of our model, with a target of 30% of product sales being fully digital by 2025 for eligible products and ongoing enhancement of the Societe Generale mobile banking app. We will make our back-office operations more efficient through greater specialisation of teams by transaction, and a decrease in the number of processing sites from 24 to 13."