Lloyds Banking Group has announced plans for one in every four of its staff to be dedicated to helping people and organisations use the internet to improve their digital skills and financial capability.

The move will deliver 20,000 ‘digital champions’ by 2017, as part of the bank’s Helping Britain Prosper Plan, which has already seen Lloyds become a founding partner of digital skills charity Go ON UK.

Employees will be trained through the LBG Digital Academy. The first 7,000 champions will be in place by 2015, spearheaded by the group’s community bank branches, who will also have access to a network of over 5,000 UK online centres from another digital skills charity, the Tinder Foundation.

According to figures released by Lloyds, 8.3 million people in the UK do not use the internet and one in five adults lack basic digital skills. But the bank said that on a like-for-like basis, its customers that were actively using online banking were more likely to demonstrate behaviours associated with good money management.

For example, Lloyds online banking customers had more than double the average savings balances compared to their non-online banking equivalents, and four out of five online customers accessed their accounts an average of 60 times a year, compared to just one in 10 of those not online.

Miguel-Ángel Rodríguez-Sola, group director for digital at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We firmly believe that digital technology can play a pivotal role in Britain’s prosperity. By helping customers and communities use digital technology, they are empowered to unlock the many benefits that digital delivers, including saving money and being able to better manage their finances. We believe we can make a very real difference in this regard by harnessing the diverse skills of our colleagues together with digital information and technology.”

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