Lloyds TSB has shelved plans to develop an online share dealing platform for Create, its under-performing wealth management arm.
The UK bank, which recently announced plans to lose an additional 3000 jobs as it stepped up a cost cutting programme, says it has frozen development of the sharedealing facility in response to the prolonged fall-off in retail investor activity and confidence.
Create was launched in October 2001 as a seperate division catering for the mass-affluent market. Within a week, managing director Laura Powers-Freeling announced she would be moving to a new position at high street retailer Marks & Spencer, and Lloyds intimated that it would be scaling back its ambitions for the service.
The online sharedealing platform was intended to complement and augment Lloyds TSB's telephone-based execution-only service Sharedeal Direct. It was to offer online trading in equities and funds alongside research from Goldman Sachs.
With the mass-affluent market in the doldrums, the bank says it will concentrate its efforts on its traditional private banking services.