Amsterdam - Dutch banking and insurance giant ING announced Wednesday it would scrap 2,700 jobs in the Netherlands as part of worldwide cutbacks unveiled last month.

The group told staff that 1,000 workers would be made redundant, with a further 1,700 positions lost as vacancies were cancelled and retiring staff not replaced.

ING announced on January 26 that it was to lose 7,000 employees worldwide, but Wednesday's announcment was the first concrete details of where the cuts would come.

The cutbacks should save the bank a total of 1 billion euros (1.3 billion dollars), it said. ING announced the redundancies after reporting a loss of 3.9 billion euros in the last quarter of 2008.

The vast majority of the 1,000 redundancies will come from the group's banking and real estate divisions, and the headquarters in Amsterdam, although all ING divisions will be affected.

"This was a tough decision," an ING spokesman said, "The following nine months we will do our best to help people find new jobs, internally at ING or otherwise externally."

The largest Dutch union FNV said it was "shocked" by the announcement.

"It is incredible that government support for this bank does not result in more employment, but in cutbacks," said FNV's Jan Paul Veenhuizen.

ING Group received government financial aid in October and January.

Wednesday's announcement follows one day after Postbank, a subsidiary of the ING Group, formally merged with ING Bank.

Nearly half of the Netherlands 16.9 million population had accounts at Postbank, a former state bank and one of the strongest brands of the Netherlands.

ING Group said the merger, which had been planned for several years, was necessary to cut costs.

The International Netherlands Group (ING) was created in a 1992 merger of several Dutch banks and insurance companies.

It is active in banking, insurance and asset management, with more than 75 million customers worldwide. (dpa)