FDIC to offer buyouts to 2,500 employees this spring

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will offer cash buyouts to about 2,500 employees beginning in April, an agency spokesman said Friday. FDIC, which insures deposits at the nation's 9,700-plus banks and savings associations, hopes to reduce its workforce from 6,200 to 5,500 by September 2002, said spokesman Phil Battey. If the agency doesn't meet its workforce reduction goal through buyouts, it will begin laying off employees, he said. The agency will offer approximately 2,500 bank examiners 50 percent of their annual salaries and other incentives to leave voluntarily. The buyout was announced Wednesday by FDIC Chairman Donald E. Powell during an agency conference in Chantilly, Va., Battey said. Field examiners and compliance examiners are not eligible for the buyouts. Recently, the FDIC proposed laying off 95 employees in the legal division of the Washington and Dallas offices because of a lesser workload. FDIC has been steadily downsizing its workforce for the past decade. The agency, which has offered buyouts over the years, employed 22,300 at its peak in the early 1990s, according to Battey.