Barclays to lose 3700 jobs

The bank is aiming to reduce costs by £1.7bn as it announced a drop in pretax profits to £246m in 2012 from £5.9bn in 2011.

Barclays chief executive, Antony Jenkins, said the bank intends to build a financial plan based on conservative assumptions of the economy and revealed “Barclays is changing”.

He said: “We have today set out a new course for the future of Barclays. I am extremely proud of the way our 140,000 staff have overcome the difficulties of the last year and shown the resilience necessary to deliver the results we announced this morning.

“It gives me great confidence in our ability to deliver our goal and from today I am determined that no-one should be able to question our intent or our commitment to the path that I have set out."

Under the programme name Transform, Jenkins said the bank intends to provide greater disclosure and transparency around its financial performance along with the publication of a financial scorecard.

In its financial performance statement, mortgage balances stood at £114.7bn at 31 December 2012 up from £107.8bn in 2011 with gross new mortgage lending of £18.2bn, an increase of £1bn on 2011’s figures.

Mortgage redemptions totalled £11.3bn compared to £10.7bn in 2011 resulting in net new mortgage lending of £6.9bn, from £6.5bn in 2011.

The average loan to value for the mortgage portfolio, including buy-to-let, was 46% compared to 44% in December 2011 while the average LTV of new mortgage lending was 56%, up 2% on December 2011.