LLOYDS Banking Group is to axe 450 jobs in a move that will mainly affect back office staff.

The lender chalked the move up to organisational changes that will help it “adapt and evolve to support changes in customer behaviour”.

A spokeswoman said branch closures were not on the cards and the decision was in line with its current strategy.

Lloyds said it was also creating 255 new roles as part of the shake-up, and focused on a net figure of 195 job losses.

Lloyds said it would try to redeploy affected staff where possible.

“The group’s policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the group,” the bank said.

“Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, we will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort.

“This announcement involves making difficult decisions and we are committed to working through these changes in a careful and sensitive way.”

The bank said it was all part of a £3 billion investment aimed at “new technology and people, equipping teams with the specific skills required to advise and support our customers”.

Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, said: “According to recent Lloyds Banking Group TV adverts ‘We’ve come a long, long way together through the hard times and the good’.

“However, there appears to be no such sentiment for the colleagues whose hard work and dedication has enabled the group to return to private ownership, make significant profits and to deliver their ‘help Britain prosper’ strategy.”

It is the latest in a string of announcements from Lloyds that have seen the overhaul its workforce and branch network in recent months.

In April, Lloyds announced it was slashing 1230 jobs across its branch network and some central functions.

The decision was part of plans to shutter a further 49 branches across its Lloyds and Halifax brands between July and October this year.

Lloyds said in April that it was creating 925 roles elsewhere in the business and was adding another seven mobile branches to its network to offset the closures.

The lender last year confirmed it would shut 100 branches with hundreds of jobs being impacted, while in February, it announced another 465 roles were being cut.

Jobs cuts have been accelerated in the wake of the bank’s full privatisation last year.

The UK Government sold its remaining stake in Lloyds in May 2017 following its bailout at the height of the financial crisis nine years earlier.

Lloyds shares were up 0.7% in afternoon trading.

The lender came under fire earlier this week after the publication of a damning report from 2013 which claimed Lloyds had evidence of fraud at the HBOS Reading unit just months before rescuing HBOS at the height of the financial crisis.

It also alleges that the “strategy since July 2007, and possibly from 2005, has been to conceal the Reading Incident”.

A Lloyds spokesman said the report was written by an employee on their own initiative, but was provided to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and police as soon as the bank was made aware of it.

An investigation into the “extent and nature of the knowledge of the discovery of misconduct” by the FCA is ongoing.