Barclays has reportedly laid off more than 200 employees across various departments in India, in a bid to shift focus to wealthy clients from the mass market. Earlier in December 2009, the bank laid off 150 employees.

The move is in line with the UK-based bank’s decision to shift its focus to corporate and investment banking from retail banking in India, Pakistan, Russia and the United Arab Emirates. In early 2010, the bank renamed its retail and banking operations as Barclays Corporate.

Reportedly, jobs in the non-banking finance unit, Barclays Finance, as well as in the global retail and commercial banking operations have been affected. The maximum job losses have been reported in the collections division of the bank.

Barclays is said to have paid severance packages of about three-months’ salary to each retrenched employee.

Barclays is expected to have around 5,000 employees across its five business units in India post the current job cut. The bank is planning to hire people in specialized functions such as premier banking relationship management in near future.

A spokesman of Barclays in India said: “We may have had to take some tough decisions in the last few months to ensure that we have the right focus. But we are of the view that they were the right ones,” reported The Economic Times.