Lloyds shifts skilled IT jobs from UK to India

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Lloyds Banking Group is hiring hundreds of IT engineers in India while planning to cut hundreds of similar jobs in the UK, in a move that will result in almost half of its engineers being based outside its home market by the end of the year.

The British bank plans to have 4,000 permanent employees working in technology and data in India by the end of the year, according to an internal presentation seen by the Financial Times. This will account for nearly half of the global total of such jobs, according to a person familiar with the plans.

They will be based in a tech centre in Hyderabad that opened in 2023, in what the bank called a “pivotal moment in our overall transformation journey”. It is recruiting for roles in Hyderabad which include full-stack, cloud and quality engineers: highly skilled jobs.

The hiring spree in India comes as the bank, which markets itself under the tagline “Helping Britain Prosper”, is midway through an overhaul of its IT function.

Some 6,000 employees in Lloyds’ UK IT department received a warning last month that their jobs were at risk as the bank conducted a review of “the skills required for each critical role in our engineering job families”.

The bank plans to create 1,200 new high-skilled tech jobs as part of the review, according to a person familiar with the plans. However, staff will have to apply for those jobs and enter a competitive selection process due to end later this month.

Lloyds has not said how many roles it expects to cut in the UK, but has confirmed that some workers are expected to lose their jobs.

“While many colleagues will transition into these new roles, we do expect some will not secure a role through this change, considering skills, location and reduced demand for certain roles,” the bank’s chief operating officer, Ron van Kemenade, said in a letter to employees last month.

Mark Brown, general secretary of BTU, an independent union at Lloyds, said that the bank was “doing the exact opposite” of helping Britain prosper and accused it of “breathtaking hypocrisy”.

Brown called on the bank to commit to training homegrown IT specialists with apprenticeships instead.

Other UK banks and building societies have already shifted operations to India. More than 17,000 NatWest employees are based in Bengaluru and Gurugram, according to its annual report, while Nationwide has also transferred some IT jobs to India.

Lloyds is seeking to improve returns by digitising its operations; part of a wider £4bn investment plan led by chief executive Charlie Nunn which involves boosting revenues from areas less closely tied to interest rates, as well as cutting costs.

As part of this drive, the company has already said it plans to cut 500 jobs this year, in areas ranging from customer service to sustainability. The high-street bank also said it will close two offices and shut an additional 136 branches in the UK.

Lloyds said: “Making changes means not only creating new roles and upskilling colleagues but also saying goodbye to talented people who have been part of the group’s success in the past.”