Kent banking jobs are at risk after RBS announced 4,500 could go nationally 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 would 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.

Trade union officials condemned the decision.