Nearly 900 jobs were lost across the banking sector in Abu Dhabi in the last one year, according to a report by the Statistics Center Abu Dhabi (Scad). The number of employees in the sector stands at 12,500 in the first quarter of 2017. The report said the sector saw a 6.9% yoy decline in the number of employees compared to the 13,400 employees working in it in the first quarter of 2016. The figures covered all commercial and Islamic banks it studied in Abu Dhabi. The decline comes amid a slowdown in the banking sector, especially during 2016, with many publicly-listed banks reporting lower yoy profit growth and some reporting a decline in profitability. The drop also comes amid consolidation in the sector, with two of Abu Dhabi’s largest banks having merged as of the beginning of April 2017.
