Royal Bank of Scotland warned of more jobs losses in the UK and internationally as it said the 2,700 announced so far this year were "not the end of the story".
The embattled bank, which is majority owned by the Government, said it was still unclear how many redundancies in total would be made.
RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton also called for an end to its "public flogging" ahead of its annual general meeting in Edinburgh.
Shareholders are expected to voice their fury after a catastrophic year for the bank at the meeting, with plans to vote down the remuneration report in protest at former chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin's controversial pension payout.
RBS said it would do "all it can" to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum and was hoping job losses would be minimised by natural turnover.
The group is cutting 2,700 staff in the UK this year as part of plans to cut £2.5 billion from annual costs within the next three years.
In an attempt to draw a line in the sand, Sir Philip asked for the slew of recent "embarrassing" stories to be put behind it in order to allow staff to focus on nursing the bank back to health.
He said: "The majority of RBS staff in the UK earn less than £21,000 a year - they are not fat-cats or city slickers, they work in branches, call-centres and offices in every community in the country serving our customers to a standard of service that is among the best in the industry."
"They do not deserve to share the worst of the criticisms being laid at the door of their employer and their industry," he urged.
Sir Philip pointed the blame for the bank's troubles firmly at the decision to acquire ABN Amro in 2007.
