In a bid to improve operational efficiency across the bank, Société Générale is centralising its IT infrastructure management into a new Global Technologies and Services (GTS) division.
The new shared services platform will support all banking functions from retail, corporate and investment banking, with responsibility for 160,000 workstations, 25,000 servers, 200,000 telephones and all the corresponding networks and services.
Françoise Mercadal-Delasalles, group resources director and member of the group executive committee, says: "This unique services platform is emblematic of our group's will to industrialise our operational model and to mutualise our resources in order to improve operational efficiency."
One thousand employees in France have already joined the new entity, with IT staff from 40 other countries transitioning in the coming months. Bertrand Lemarignier, SocGen's CIO for the corporate and investment banking division has been appointed director of GTS, reporting to Mercadal-Delasalles.
News of the initiative comes as the French bank reports a slump in profits of more than a half to EUR31 million in the first quarter after provisioning for EUR1.1 billion in bad debts.