Truist laid off roughly 80 employees in its Atlanta and Memphis, Tennessee, offices on Thursday, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender also said it aims to stop sales and trading of mortgage-backed securities and government-agency and Small Business Administration bonds by January.
“Truist Securities regularly assesses opportunities for our organization and makes adjustments to our business to invest in areas for growth,” the bank said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. “We made the decision to exit certain aspects of our fixed income sales, research and trading business by January 2024, and will work closely with our clients to support them during this transition.”
The move marks at least the second round of job cuts at the bank in less than three months. Truist laid off roughly 5% of its investment-banking division — encompassing dozens of jobs — in late January.
“Truist continues to assess and adjust the size of our workforce on an ongoing basis,” bank spokesperson Kyle Tarrance told Bloomberg at the time. “We’re hiring in some areas and rightsizing in others through natural attrition and planned staffing reductions.”
Truist is just one of several banks this year taking a hard look at headcount and the services it considers core.
Goldman Sachs in January began a cull that could ultimately reduce headcount by 3,200 people. BNY Mellon and Capital One followed suit with 1,500 and 1,100 job cuts, respectively. Wells Fargo in January said it would exit correspondent lending and later made 500 more cuts to its home-lending division.
Even banks seen as relatively safe from cuts have become markedly less so in recent months. Bank of America, for example, indicated in September that it would manage headcount though attrition, but instituted a partial hiring freeze in January and reportedly cut 200 investment bankers the next month.
Citi, likewise, is cutting hundreds of positions, including some in investment banking, mortgage underwriting and technology, Bloomberg and Reuters reported last month.
