Lloyds sends 2000 staff to IBM in IT deal

Lloyds Banking Group is set to sign a £1.3 billion deal with IBM that will see almost 2000 jobs transferred to the US IT giant, it emerged today.

Lloyds has lined up a seven-year outsourcing deal, which it reckons will save it some £760 million in costs.

The move comes just months after Lloyds suffered an online attack when cybercriminals attempted to block access to 20 million UK accounts.

Lloyds Trade Union, which represents some 30,000 staff but was “derecognised” by the bank two years ago, claimed the work will be “offshored” over a four-year period and most of the 1900 transferred staff would be axed.

The union claimed senior Lloyds IT managers were “concerned that critical systems which underpin the bank’s major payment, treasury trading, settlement and digital services [would] eventually be run offshore”.

The bank was hit by a “denial of service” attack spanning two days in January.