Lloyds TSB to offshore 450 IT jobs

Hundreds of IT jobs could be lost at Lloyds TSB as part of the bank's plans to offshore 450 posts from the UK to India this year, a trade union has warned.

Lloyds TSB will offshore up to 250 permanent and 200 contractor posts in the technical delivery department from the UK to India from June this year.

The bank is considering outsourcing further jobs in the programme-management department, which employs 75 people, later in the year, according to internal statements released by the Lloyds TSB Union (LTU).

The bank said any affected staff will be offered a replacement role, but LTU claimed there is no guarantee these jobs would be at the same level or in the same location, adding that two-thirds of equivalent positions in the UK are being offshored.

Steve Tatlow, assistant general secretary to LTU, said: "There is no guarantee that these replacement roles will be on the same pay scale, [in the same] location or even that the job will be in IT; they could be completely unsuitable. A lot of people will be choosing redundancy. We are fundamentally opposed to offshoring."

The majority of affected staff are likely to be based in London and Wythenshawe, near Manchester, where Lloyds TSB has a total of 1,760 staff, although 11 offices around the UK could be affected.

The change is estimated to mean that only a fifth of tech staff working in the affected areas, mainly internal software design and testing, will be left in the UK.

Lloyds TSB said it will retrain anybody who has to move into an unfamiliar role.

A Lloyds TSB spokesman said: "This is not done for cost savings; it is about making sure our IT service delivers the best. Group IT is the backbone of the business and we need to deliver a service that is second to none."

Cognizant, TCS and Wipro will take over the positions, following Lloyds TSB outsourcing 210 IT jobs to these service providers last year.