UK
Tracking the banking IT redundancies
30 March 2009
HSBC’s decision to cut 1,200 jobs in the UK on Wednesday is to see the axe largely fall on the humble technology divisions. Obviously, compared to the revenue-generating side of banking, IT is pretty unglamorous, which means redundancy announcements don’t attract a massive amount of attention.
However, over the last 12 months they’ve felt their fair share of pain:
• Up to 350 staff could be cut as insurance firm Axa Sun Life looks to shift its BPO work to a third-party.
• Barclays, having announced plans to offshore 1,800 jobs in July last year, revealed in January it was cutting a further 400 tech jobs from its ‘global infrastructure and service delivery’ division in London a Cheshire.
• IT staff were among the 650 job cuts announced by Credit Suisse in December.
• Following its takeover by Commerzbank, Dresdner Bank embarked on a cost-cutting in September that could see 9,000 jobs lost worldwide by 2011. Considering the sizable IT departments of both banks, techies were expected to be at the sharp end of these cuts.
• Goldman Sachs is rumoured to be mulling more job cuts, which is likely to predominantly affect support functions including technology.
• It emerged in October that HBOS is in the process of securing an offshoring deal that could eliminate 2,000 tech jobs currently based in the UK.
• Lloyds TSB sent 450 UK IT roles from its programme management development arm on a passage to India in May last year. More roles were expected to be offshored before the merger with HBOS, and technology cost cutting is likely to be at the top of the agenda within the combined entity.
• As it searches for some $7bn in cost savings following its take over by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch said in October that ‘thousands’ of jobs would be lost, mainly in technology.
• The latest round of cuts at Morgan Stanley – around 1,800 jobs – are mainly affecting back office staff, including IT.
• IT staff at RBS understandably think their jobs are in a precarious position.
It seems as if IT has had its day in the Western World. It uses to be seen as a career not a statistic on a HR sheet of paper. It will get to a stage that all the IT work will be shipped off to India and any other Thirld World country so the Company can make an extra buck. It is immoral what is going on in the Financial companies with respect to IT staff.
Phil Austin 22 Apr 2009
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