As many as 3000 jobs have been slashed by banks in UAE’s Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the last one year. Abu Dhabi lost some 900 jobs with the number of employees in the sector dropping to 12,500 in the first quarter of 2017. A report from the Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi (SCAD) said the sector saw a 6.9% year-on-year decline in the number of employees compared to the 13,400 employees in Q1 2016. SCAD said the figures were for all commercial and Islamic banks it studied in Abu Dhabi. The drop also comes amid consolidation in the sector, with two of Abu Dhabi’s largest banks, First Gulf Bank (FGB) and National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), merging in April 2017. Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank cut more than 400 jobs between the first quarters of 2016 and 2017. Meanwhile, Emirates NBD, Dubai’s largest lender, laid off approximately 300 people in Q1 2016 at two of its subsidiaries to cope with a weaker economy. The bank made 100 people redundant from Emirates Money as part of a move to merge the small-business finance provider with Emirates NBD’s operations to save costs. Emirates Islamic (EI), the group’s sharia-compliant unit, also shed close to 200 people.
