Lloyds TSB offshores 450 IT jobs

A spokesman told Finextra the jobs will go from the bank's IT division's technical delivery unit, which designs, develops and tests software. The work is expected to be transferred to India by the end of the year.

Lloyds TSB says it will offer all permanent staff affected another job within the company as well as a £2000 training bond to help develop new skills.

The bank has not revealed where in the UK the jobs will go from but financial union Unite claims the move will affect IT staff in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Haywards Heath, Gloucester, Andover, Edinburgh and Brighton.

In a statement Unite says the move is "unjustified and represents a lack of faith in the IT skills of their UK workforce".

In a separate statement the Lloyds TSB Group Union says the bank intends to begin transferring jobs to India from August, with completion of this phase of offshoring expected early next year.

"Once this phase of offshoring is complete, the union expects other areas of the Information technology division’s 2400 UK-based workforce to follow suit, with many hundreds more IT jobs transferring to India as a consequence," says the Lloyds TSB Group Union in a statement.

Last year Lloyds TSB shifted around 210 IT roles at its mortgage lender Cheltenham & Gloucester to offshore centres. Over the past five years the bank has implemented an extensive offshoring programme and shifted a number of functions to cheaper centres in India.

However last year the bank said it was closing a call cdenter in Mumbai because interactive voice recognition (IVR) technology introduced last year has reduced the number of calls sent through to staff.