Banking jobs across the UK, including Kent, are at risk after RBS announced that 4,500 could go within the next two years.

It is part of a proposed cull of up to 9,000 jobs worldwide by the bank which was kept alive by a taxpayer bailout.

Most of the jobs will go in back office work, call centres, purchasing, IT and property. The bank already announced 2,700 job losses earlier in the year.

The bank said the number of job losses might be less than the headline figure following a consultation exercise with staff and trade union Unite.

It added that a "redeployment programme" had already identified 650 new job opportunities in the UK and the impact will also be reduced through natural turnover and less use of agency staff.

An RBS spokeswoman said it was not yet known how the cuts would affect jobs in the regions and no customer-facing branch staff would face redundancy. However, there could be an impact on the county, she said.

The bank was unveiling the numbers early because it wanted to be "as upfront and transparent as possible." It would be an anxious time for employees and it wanted to keep that anxiety to a minimum.

RBS said it would accept applications for voluntary redundancies and hoped to hoped to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum.

The measures are aimed at saving annual running costs of £2.5bn.

RBS chief executive Stephen Hester said: "We have set a new strategy for RBS to restore the Bank to standalone strength as soon as practicable. From this we want the Government to be able to realise value from its investment in RBS.

"To do so we need to cut our costs, as in all businesses, given the current recession. Unfortunately that means taking difficult decisions about jobs as well as taking many other cost reduction actions. We want to be as open and transparent as possible and are announcing these plans at the earliest possible opportunity so that our employees can prepare for the future."

Trade union officials condemned the decision.