back to article Lloyds Banking Group axing hundreds of jobs again

Lloyds Banking Group is throwing more UK techies overboard ahead of the big outsourcing deal with a “single strategic partner” that El Reg previously revealed was IBM. In a letter to the workforce, LBG group CIO Morteza Mahjour said there were changes across five areas of the function that reported to him, including the Chief …

  1. John 104

    Responsive isn’t the word that springs to mind when customers were trying to check their bank balances back in January, and were failing miserably, possibly because Lloyds had been targeted in a DDoS attack.

    I'm sure this won't be the last time it happens to them either with these continued cuts.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Continued Cuts

      Soon it will be just the BOD and a Secretary. Everything else will be outsourced to India. All the outsourcing contracts will be managed by the Crapita/TCS join venture.

      No branches needed as they won't have any customers left but hey, they will still declare a huge profit and the BOD will take home their bonuses singing, 'aren't we all jolly good fellows'.

      As must as it hates me to say this but we need to stop this leeching of jobs and therefore money to India.

      It hurts our ballance of payments and trade. Time to bring those jobs home.

      1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Re: Continued Cuts

        @Steve Davis 3 - I used to go to the bank a dozen or so times a month. To cash cheques, to use the cashpoint (no Link service in the old days - Barclays customer, Barclays cashpoint; the tie up with Lloyds to share cashpoints was a miracle), to pay the gas bill, telephone bill, electricity bill, credit card bill, poll tax, etc. and to pay in cheques. I honestly can't remember the last time I went to the branch - it must be over three years ago.

        Back office stuff - I get, but how much are people willing to pay to keep staff onshore? If one bank stays onshore and the rest go offshore then it'll make less money, the share price will drop, it'll get bought out and the staff laid off and offshored. They could fix this by charging customers for their banking, but free banking is a sacred cow in this country and if that means a bunch of foreigners being paid sh*t wages in sweatshop conditions with no meal breaks or fire exits then so be it, as long as I don't have to pay £10 a year for my banking.

        For the past 30 years we, consumers, have been complicit as industry after industry has left the country or raced to the bottom to save money. We don't give a f**k where stuff's made, how badly staff are treated or where the profits go as long as we can buy cheap stuff. We prefer to buy trainers in well known discount sports outlets rather than the local indy sports shop and don't give a toss about the poor buggers who are treated like crap in their UK warehouses so we can save a fiver. Online shopping is so convenient - who cares if the distribution centre staff are docked wages for taking too long to piss as long as I can order a printer cartridge by lunchtime and have it tomorrow. And don't even start me on the gig economy.

        Capitalism delivers what customers value. As long as customers value cheap over ethical, moral, society, family, respect, environment, participation,....., then the market will deliver cheap at the expense of everything else .

        The banks will continue to go the same way until their customers give a toss about something other than cheap. Minimum wage, H&S, holiday pay, sick pay, pensions, p/maternity leave, welfare state etc. don't come cheap and most of us believe that these benefits are worth paying for, but only when they apply to our job.

        /end rant - sorry it came your way Steve - not aimed at you.

        1. Ian Michael Gumby

          @Headly Grange Re: Continued Cuts

          How much did HSBC pay to end the US's money laundering claim against them?

          That alone would be enough to cover the difference between onshore / off shore staffing for 10 years.

          The other issue is that you have to deal with bringing less than competent people onshore and that's a larger problem.

          Smaller, higher skilled staff can be used and while the individuals are at a premium, the TCO is lower and the amount of risk is lower.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Continued Cuts

          "They could fix this by charging customers for their banking, but free banking is a sacred cow in this country"

          While I get that it's a seeming sacred cow, it's absolutely not the case that banking is "free" in this country. You are giving an institution all of your money to look after for you. Combined with everyone else's money, they invest that and earn a shit load.

          And when you borrow from then, you pay back a staggering amount in return - and if you don't, your financial life is ruined.

          It may look free from the outside, but you are giving them a heck of a lot of value instead.

      2. Tom Paine

        Re: Continued Cuts

        "You can't buck the market". Discuss.

        (Shotput, javelin...)

      3. William 3 Bronze badge

        Re: Continued Cuts

        You can't be against globalisation.

        That makes you racist bigot and a nazi.

        The message from the champagne socialists on the left.

        I suppose they've seen how massive the ivory towers are on the global scale.

        And all those little racist peons beneath them.

      4. TheVogon

        Re: Continued Cuts

        "Soon it will be just the BOD and a Secretary. "

        I don't see any functions there that AI and a coffee machine couldn't potentially cope with?

      5. JCitizen
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: Continued Cuts

        @Steve Davies 3 - I have a hunch it won't be India that many of these jobs are off-shored to. Since IBM is involved, I'd be willing to bet it will be the AI like WATSON that will be taking up the same job that more than a hundred people formerly did. If it is successful, you will see this in call centers globally soon. They will only need a small staff as backup to anything the AI can't handle.

  2. The_Idiot

    So...

    ... Lloyds are announcing staff cuts, and sending their IT work to IBM. Who, um, are announcing staff cuts...

    Sigh.

    1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: So...

      "sending their IT work to IBM. Who, um, are announcing staff cuts"

      Once this deal is signed, turn the hour glass, and see yet another round of redundancies once the TUPE protection runs out in two years.

      Lloyds staff, once TUPEd, seek other roles internally ASAP. VR isn't what it used to be, don't rely on a pay out.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They couldn't do worse though could they?

    Cough -- Verde -- /Cough

    So, Lloyds, who pissed away a billion pounds on an IT project that got nowhere, failed to sell the chunk of bank (now TSB) to a drug-addled loon because of it, then sold it to some Spaniards for 1.5bn with a 500m quid bribe to do the IT.

    No refunds. No management changes. Some very happy consultants and their buddies.

    All presided over by a serial shagger who needed time off for stress, poor lamb.

    Note, no changes in the executive during this little saga, since they have saved money, by sacking almost 60,000 people.

    Not very good is it? Good luck to IBM. All they have to do is avoid being quite so utterly pathetic.

  4. Charles Smith

    All that "Human Capital", i.e. business knowledge leaving their control. Earlier this evening I was thinking of moving my bank accounts to Lloyds from Natwest. I think I don't I want a step into the unknown.

  5. Denarius
    Paris Hilton

    Just a thought

    Suicide is still illegal isn't it ? Even if its a company doing it ?

    1. Doctor_Wibble
      Flame

      Re: Just a thought

      > Suicide is still illegal isn't it ? Even if its a company doing it ?

      If it's a person, then it's only the unsuccessful attempts that have any chance of being prosecuted.

      However, a corporate suicide is normally considered an unmitigated success because that involves golden handshakes, extra bonuses, and an almost guaranteed seat on the board of one or more other companies who pay at least as much over the odds as you were getting.

      At the top level, failure is its own reward, see also "merry christmas I've stolen all the presents" etc.

  6. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge

    Next logical step

    outsource the clients?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crazy. IT outsourcing is so outdated. It never really worked, even in the golden age of outsourcing (early 2000s) and usually resulted in whack-a-mole costs savings. Possible cost savings on IT infrastructure roles, replaced by a bunch of project managers, relationship managers, liaisons, etc. It always eliminated any possibility of an agile or responsive IT group as you are pouring your IT processes and technologies in concrete for the 7 year period (and then will probably be forced to renew).

    I don't get it. Why not move most of this infrastructure to a public cloud service or several (AWS, Google, etc) who can doubtlessly do IT infrastructure for considerably less and with considerably more agility than any outsourcer? Then you can actually focus on modernizing technology stacks, which, in banking, are ancient. Actually improving something instead of just trying to do outdated infrastructure for less.

    If we are keeping it 100 here, some of this is in house IT's fault. Many an IT exec or manager doesn't want to move to public cloud or modernize IT either. They just want to keep paying a fortune and doing things the way they have always been done (now with some mobile apps). Outsourcing deals usually work because the CIO's plan is to keep doing, more or less, the same thing as last year and the year before with a 5% increase in costs. When outsourcers come in and ask, "are you pleased with what you are getting from IT?" and the lines of business say "hell no... we pay a fortune for IT to say 'that isn't supported' or have endless meetings with no action'"... easy pickings for the outsourcing firms.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Clouds are unsafe

      I would not put my banking data on the cloud, it is unsafe by design!!

      Also, quite obviously to anyone who works using the cloud and inhouse, quite expensive.

      It does make sense for a small operation (us ours) or a big one that doesnt want to deal with having their own IT .. at a price.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Clouds are unsafe

        "Also, quite obviously to anyone who works using the cloud and inhouse, quite expensive."

        Not saying that you can't get ripped off by some provider, but the economics and technology are all on the side of the hyper-scale cloud providers. More volume is less costly per unit than less volume. The hyper scalers can also invest in technologies which are beyond the skills, frankly, of the average or even the large traditional business... as they are just not in the business of building technology. Everyone gets this instantly when it comes to WAN/internet service... way less costly to use a carrier than drag fiber for thousands of miles, and you don't need to maintain it (more volume vs less volume). AT&T can invest in state of the art network tech which just wouldn't be economical for a non-carrier. But when it comes to compute instead of network... that's totally different to people, for some reason.

    2. Annihilator

      "IT outsourcing is so outdated..."

      "I don't get it. Why not move most of this infrastructure to a public cloud service or several (AWS, Google, etc)..."

      Ummm... this is a joke or sarcasm, right?

      1. PeteA

        @Annihilator

        I think those statements illustrate the commodification of IT. A hundred and fifty years ago, if I could afford electricity then I might have started to consider outsourcing the generation instead of having my own generator. Now, I don't even consider it as outsourcing - I just use a public utility provider and pay for what I use (as measured by a dial on the little box where the wire comes in). We outsource the vast majority of our lives these days, with the trend having been present from the dawn of civilisation as we specialised our roles and skills. There are very few people [in the UK] who grow their own food and rely on domestic electrical generation these days.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @Annihilator

          "We outsource the vast majority of our lives these days"

          Exactly, I always say that everyone (except for Google) uses the networking cloud and always has via AT&T, Verizon, etc in the US. It is all a matter of what you have become accustomed to and how orgs are built. If you asked a business that has offices in NYC and San Francisco, "are you planning to use a carrier to connect those two offices (cloud), or are you planning on digging your own dark fiber line across the country for 3,000 miles (on prem)?" it would seem like an insane question.... Yet spending a hundred million to build a data center, totally normal. All depends on how you are accustomed to thinking about IT. But a mid size business building a data center makes about as much sense as buying a back-hoe and digging your own WAN/internet.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "I don't get it. Why not move most of this infrastructure to a public cloud service or several (AWS, Google, etc)..."

        Cloud is more automation than outsourcing. Would running an ERP system be considering the outsourcing of bookkeeping?

  8. ecofeco Silver badge

    IBM?

    I can already see the future headlines and it's not god.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Buy Silver....

    So, my bank is about to subcontract to IBM (== off-shore to India). I deal with their corporate consulting quite regularly (hence the AC) so I think I'll be closing that account and converting the proceeds to silver ingots to hide under the floor boards. Even if there's a 1 in 10 chance of them being nicked, that's still better odds than staying with a bank that uses that crowd for their IT .. and I think I'm being generous saying 1 in 10.........

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