Arion Bank laid off 46 employees today. The news was first published by mbl.is, and just now, Arion Bank published a statement confirming the news. The statement explains that 27 of those laid off work at the bank’s headquarters, but 19 elsewhere. After the layoff, the bank will employ about 840 people.
“Several factors in the bank’s environment call for a change in operation,” the statement reads. “Most important is the fact that financial service is changing in a major way these days. Customers increasingly choose to take advantage of self service options, such as a bank app, online banking, and ATMs, instead of branch services. The use of the app and the ATMs at the branches has increased manifold in recent years. For this reason, the demand for service at the bank’s branches has decreased by a third in two years. This development calls for changes, and simultaneously, restructuring is taking place at the bank’s branches, without reducing their numbers.”
The statement goes on to describe today’s layoffs as part of the bank’s streamlining its operations, before it concludes, “Cutting the number of employees is a difficult step to make, but a necessary one in light of a changed emphasis in the bank’s operations and external conditions.”
