As the first month of summer began the banking world was greeted with the news that the mighty Lloyds Banking Group was to streamline its broker offering by channelling all business via Birmingham Midshires, Cheltenham & Gloucester, Halifax and Scottish Widows Bank.

The reorganisation will mean a serious shake-up for all staff involved, as the separate brands' national account organisations are consolidated.

It is thought that the change will result in the loss of approximately 160 full-time jobs across the brands' intermediary sales teams.

Meanwhile, Bank of Scotland and Intelligent Finance - while continuing to service the needs of existing customers - will no longer write new broker mortgage business. IF will continue to offer a savings product but will not provide mortgages.

Both IF and SWB used to offer offset mortgage products but now Lloyds says there is no point having two providers of offsets under the same umbrella. From now on SWB will be the only provider of such products in the group.

Also, C&G's 164-strong branch network will close in November as the division focusses on building its significant mortgage intermediary businesses.

In total, up to 1,660 full time jobs will be affected by the changes at Lloyds Banking Group.

The BoS, Halifax and Lloyds TSB brands will all continue to operate on the high street, providing new mortgages and a range of other direct-to-consumer financial products.

Later this year BoS - which currently provides Halifax-branded mortgages on the high street - will provide BoS-branded mortgages.

Lloyds Banking Group's mortgage businesses will continue to be managed primarily from Barnwood, Halifax and Pendeford.

At the time Nigel Stockton, sales director at Lloyds Banking Group, said: "These are tough changes to make."

And while the financial services industry was struggling to come to terms with the changes taking place at the sector's biggest lender, some depressing figures were released by the Office for National Statistics.

The ONS revealed that the number of individuals out of work rose by 244,000 to 2.2 million in the first three months of 2009.

The official jobless rate rose from 6.7% to 7.1% while the number of people claiming benefits related to unemployment rose by 57,100 to 1.51 million. The quarterly rise in unemployment was the biggest since 1981.

The figures were released a day earlier than planned due to what the ONS terms an 'accidental release', and the organisation has launched an inquiry into how this was allowed to happen.