Around 9,000 back-office staff are at risk of losing their jobs as troubled financial institution Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced a major cull at its group manufacturing division.

UK-based staff will be the most affected by the job cuts at the division, which includes IT, document processing, procurement and property and employs 45,000 people worldwide.

The main reason for the job cuts is the reduction in business volumes for the bank. At the same time, RBS has also seen an increase in uptake of online banking and is focusing on driving automation in customer service in areas such as loan applications.

Despite the need to generate £2.5bn of savings over the next two years, the bank said that it would try to minimise compulsory redundancies and redeploy staff to areas of fast growth – it is understood that 650 new vacancies have been identified.

As part of its strategy to mitigate the impact of the job losses, RBS has also put a voluntary redundancy scheme in place and will reduce the amount of IT contractors it employs.

The news follow RBS’s announcement earlier this year that it would seek to eliminate 2,700 jobs from its UK corporate workforce. Last week, insurance giant Aviva said it will shed almost 1,700 IT and business change staff as part of a three-year efficiency plan, as IT jobs across the financial sector come under increasing pressure from the credit crunch.