Internet bank to create 600 jobs

Intelligent Finance was launched 18 months ago

The internet and phone bank Intelligent Finance has announced plans to create 600 jobs at a new facility in Scotland.

The decision to choose a location in Fife is understood to have been made amid stiff competition from other locations in the UK.

The internet banking arm of the Halifax opened for business 18 months ago at offices in Edinburgh and Livingston.

A completion of its expansion into Fife will see its workforce reach almost 3,000.

Gordon Brown welcomed IF's jobs plan

The new facility will be located in a state-of-the-art building at Rosyth Europarc.

It is thought that 800 people will be located there in a customer contact and administration centre.

Six hundred new jobs will be created and a further 200 staff will move from the company's other premises.

Fife is understood to have been chosen despite a fierce challenge from other areas.

Local MP, Chancellor Gordon Brown, who opened the bank in September 2000, is said to have worked closely with enterprise agency Invest In Fife to persuade the company to move there, rather than to the north of England.

Unemployment 'halved'

The firm intends to start recruiting staff immediately and set its business in motion by May or June.

Mr Brown, whose Dunfermline East constituency covers Rosyth, said he was delighted by the new jobs.

"Today's announcement means that 10,000 jobs have been created in the last five years and unemployment is now half its previous level in the Dunfermline district

Rosyth has previously relied on heavy industry

"The Intelligent Finance development demonstrates Fife's new role in financial services which we plan to build on in the next few months to come," he added.

Mr Brown added: "Over the last three decades Fife has lost thousands of jobs in the mining and defence industry, but working together, business, workforces, the council, local MPs and local people, thousands of new jobs are being created."

It is estimated that Intelligent Finance handles more than 327,000 accounts worth £8.9bn.

• The Inland Revenue is to set up a call centre in West Lothian in August, bringing 300 civil service jobs to the area.

  Recruiting is about to start and West Lothian Council hopes that former employees of Motorola and NEC will fill some of the posts.