The chief executive of consumer lending at Lloyds Banking Group is to leave after the company announced a four-year strategy focusing on the simplification of the business.

Jayne Opperman, who sits on the group’s executive committee, was brought into the role by chief executive officer Charlie Nunn in 2023 and will leave the group at the end of the year.

She was previously chief operating officer at Barclays UK and has had a 25-year career in financial services at groups such as Citigroup, Westpac and ANZ.

Opperman’s departure comes as the UK’s biggest lender plans to combine its consumer relationships and consumer lending divisions. The new, enlarged consumer business will be led by Jas Singh, the current head of the consumer relationships division.

“[We are] creating a single consumer business to more closely connect the scale of our data, the power of our digital platforms and the expertise of our colleagues in ways that help us anticipate customer needs, personalise experiences and support better financial outcomes,” Lloyds said.

The changes are part of Lloyds’ new strategy, called Accelerate 2030, which focuses on simplifying the group as well as scaling its core businesses, including improving its business and commercial banking unit and growing its corporate and institutional business.

The lender expects the strategy to cut around £2bn in costs.

Lloyds will also increase its efforts in the wealth management market, increasing its offerings from execution-only investment, “Invest AI” — a new AI-enabled service giving simplified advice to those who want it — to full financial planning.

In its half-year results published last week, the group said it plans to improve non-interest income by growing its bancassurance and wealth products as well as new payments products, allowing its business clients to target campaigns and cashback offers to the bank’s retail customers, and moving towards supporting tokenised deposits.

Lloyds posted a 21 per cent year-on-year increase in non-interest income to £3.5bn in the first half of the year, beating analysts’ expectations. It was driven by higher fee and commission income and bigger investment returns among its insurance and investment products.

The increase in net income pushed its pre-tax profits to £4.3bn, a 23 per cent rise.