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BANK OF IRELAND has announced plans to recruit 130 technology professionals.
The new roles will include technical architects, software developers, engineers, specialised project managers, scrum masters and data analysts.
Of the 130 roles being announced, 30 are at an advanced recruitment stage and 100 are currently advertised or will be advertised with the expectation the roles will be hired over the next 12 months.
Today’s announcement comes after Bank of Ireland confirmed in March plans to close 88 branches in Ireland and a further 15 branches in Northern Ireland.
The closures will see the branch network in Ireland reduce from 257 to 169 and from 28 to 13 in Northern Ireland.
After a review of its internal software systems, the bank took a €136 million impairment charge last year, concluding that certain aspects of its digital transformation initiative “had not matured sufficiently”.
Launched in 2016, the digital revamp, dubbed ‘Project Omega’, had an initial price-tag of €500 million, which increased to €1.4 billion in 2018.
In its 2020 annual report, the bank said it had “formed the judgement that certain software assets were impaired, as they were no longer expected to provide future economic benefits.
“Accordingly, an impairment charge of €136 million has been recognised in the year, of which €127 million was charged to the transformation investment asset and €9 million was charged to other internally generated computer software,” the bank said.
In a statement today, Bank of Ireland’s group chief operating officer Jackie Noakes said: “The pace of banking is changing rapidly and we’ve reached a tipping point between offline banking and 24/7 digital services.
“That makes roles like these critical to how we serve our customers, bring products and services to market and develop our business in the future.”
Bank of Ireland booked a €374 million loss in 2020, mostly due to a €1.1 billion write-down of its loan book in anticipation of a wave of pandemic-linked defaults.
In March, Bank of Ireland said a new partnership with An Post will offer customers access to a range of banking services at over 900 locations. This will include withdrawing cash and making cash and cheque lodgements.
The bank also indicated that €12 million will be invested in a re-sized branch network by the end of 2022.
Following the announcement of the branch closures, Labour’s finance spokesperson Ged Nash said it was a “kick in the teeth” for customers and staff of Bank of Ireland.
“There is no doubt that Bank of Ireland is exploiting the Covid-19 crisis to drive down its costs. The bank’s ruthlessly opportunistic plans to cull 88 branches in towns across the State will have an even more severe and direct impact on the fabric of communities across the country than Ulster Bank’s recent announcement, given their extensive reach,” Nash said.
“Physical bank branches are intrinsic to the commercial and social life of main street Ireland but it seems that this is a factor of limited interest to the Central Bank of Ireland as the regulator.”
Additional reporting by Ian Curran
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They hire the 130 staff in order to automate the jobs of 1000s of staff. Then once the 130 have their jobs mostly done they can outsource maintenance of the system they created to some crowd in India and send the 130 home as well.
Eventually it will be just Mr. BOI laying in a hammock between two palm trees on the beach in the Bahamas with a cocktail in one hand and his phone in the other watching his bank balance steadily increase.
Fees will remain as high as ever if not higher, if you need to talk to a human to do something it will be nigh on impossible.
@Quiet Goer: they have moved to electronic forms with no need to be in branch to open an account and those hires will be to push on with the electronic stuff, has really sped along the old paper process
@Quiet Goer: withdrawal syndrome eh!
@Quiet Goer: Mr BOI and Hans Gruber must be going to the same beach……20% rates, I hear.
They close every outlet in the country yet. To contact them you need an email address. But if you owe them money they ring you on a private number.
They could do with a few people on their Mortgages phone line too. Just spent 24 mins on hold to get through to them. Funny enough, when you select the option for a new mortgage, you’re put through to someone straight away.
Outsourcing wasn’t as good as they thought it would be I guess! Given that they laid off or outsourced the vast majority of IT staff in the last decade.
@Melissa OHara: was it not just IT infrastructure and support that was outsourced. App development may still be in house.
Please please keep some humans… Online does not replace the need to talk and be heard and understood…. No Bot can do that with any degree of satisfaction….
@Jackie Healy:
Since when is a bank a psychiatrist?
The government is a major share holder in BOI and has not brought them to heal in any of their restructuring policies. Obviously big business owns the government and its cronies.
@Seán Dillon: Gov in the minority with 12%. On the sidelines waiting to cash out.
%14 oops
@Seán Dillon:
The bank is slowing healing from 2008 upset.
A few more years after full recovery, hopefully there will be a punter around to take that 14% off the Government’s hands at a decent price.
Off loading the larger chunks of equity held in the other two will take a fair while longer.
They have how many I T specialists in k b c . That they are taking over.
Surely that would be the best option for them
@Shay Flynn: not taking over kbc just buying the loan book arent they
Just pretend you’re buying something and you’ll get a human response pronto. I phoned BOI finance and got a name and number of a Regional Manager and my outstanding issue was resolved. Before that I did a tour of India or somewhere and the employees had no overview or authority to deal with a very small correction to my address . It was small but meant post was going elsewhere. They changed their system very shortly after I pointed out my comedy of errors.
Oh My God ! … I spoke to a real person ! What ? When did this happen ? That’s not supposed to happen ! I will report it immediately ! Some Bot is not functioning correctly .
I don’t think anyone in the comments section here gets it. Banking is changing, everything is going digital. If the legacy Banking system can’t convert they are done. BoI have failed in their attempts to modernize and compete with the new banking paradigm – I’m talking about Revolut etc. – now they need to take a less tentative conservative approach, otherwise they are bust. This is not just about profit margins, it’s about survival.
@mcmonkeys1: I was puzzled by the reference to cheques. Who uses cheques anymore?
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