Recruiting 800 new jobs for its financial services business, Tesco could soon launch a fully-fledged bank.

Tesco could soon launch a fully-fledged bank to rival the high-street establishments, as it announced today (20 August) that it will create over 800 jobs in Scotland to support its financial services business.

Tesco Personal Finance (TPF) is opening a new customer service centre in central Glasgow, which will manage customer sales and service. Broadway One, a 125,000 sqft development, has been fully let to TPF on a 20 year lease, only nine weeks after practical completion.

TPF received a grant from the Scottish Government for £5 million to assist in creating the operations centre, which is due to open in the first half of 2010 and will migrate its existing customers before the end of 2011 to ensure a seamless transition.  As with the company’s headquarters in Edinburgh, the new site is close to key transport links and built to high environmental standards.

The announcement of the new jobs was warmly welcomed by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling: “This is a strong vote of confidence in Scotland’s financial services industry from one of the UK’s leading companies. And it shows that even at this difficult time, the Scottish and wider UK economy is still creating high quality jobs.”

Andrew Higginson, Chief Executive of Tesco Retailing Services, said: “The opening of the new customer service centre will be a significant step towards TPF offering a full banking service.  It is hard to ignore that people’s trust in the banking sector is at a very low ebb. Offering first class customer service, however, is central to our Tesco values and the new centre will most certainly help us put the Tesco into Tesco Personal Finance.

“Additionally, the creation of over 800 new jobs in the current climate cannot be underestimated. Today’s announcement is great news for job seekers and for consumers.”

TPF is the UK’s largest supermarket bank – it has nearly six million customer accounts across 28 financial products and services which include general insurance - motor, home, pet and travel; credit cards and personal loans; personal savings; Tesco Compare and a network of cash machines (ATMs).

It was originally set up 12 years ago as a joint venture between the supermarket group and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Tesco bought RBS’s 50% stake in TPF last year, while there has been speculation that Tesco may also bid for Northern Rock when the government sells the lender.