The company has made record losses

The Abbey National announcement follows on from a profit of nearly �2bn the previous year.

It owns Scottish Provident and Scottish Mutual, employing about 3,000 people in Scotland.

Operations Director Mac Millington said there would be job losses north of the border but could not specify how many.

He said: "We need to review all of our operations and become more efficient.

"It's early days yet but what I can say is Scotland has a very good work force - well skilled well trained well priced.

'Reducing staffing'

"Therefore when we look where we should place operations in the UK, then we will look to those areas that have a good set of well skilled people, which Scotland has."

Mr Millington confirmed that the company would be seeking to save about �200m over the next three years

"In other areas, where we need to streamline and we have a lot of opportunity to do that, we will be reducing staffing," he said.

"But it's early in our three year strategy to be definitive."

The loss of �984m - the Abbey National's first ever recorded loss - is being blamed on bad debts arising from its move into corporate banking.

Luqman Arnold, the bank's chief executive, described the results as "extremely unsatisfactory".

Mr Arnold said the company would be taking steps to turn the loss around.