Lloyds Bank has finally put pen to paper on a long-mooted £1.3 billion, 10-year mega outsourcing deal with IBM, which will see 1500 staff and contractors moved to Big Blue.
The project, dubbed Aurora, was due to be announced in January, but negotiations with IBM have taken longer than anticipated. It will see 500 permanent staff roles and 1000 contractors transferred to IBM, with the impact being felt mostly at the bank's date centres in Copley, West Yorkshire and Edinburgh.
The agreement will see 2000 of the bank's 3200 applications running across Windows, Unix, Linux and IBM I-Series platform outsourced to Big Blue. The bank is anticipating £760 million in cost savings from the agreement.
Lloyds Trade Union, which first went public on the plans back in March, cited a presentation by the bank's chief information officer Morteza Mahjour which indicated that after four years, only 193 of the staff transferred to IBM will be working on the bank's infrastructure, with the rest of the roles offshored.
Dominic Hook, Unite national officer, says the union is "seeking urgent reassurance from IBM and Lloyds Banking Group about the long term job security of the 1,500 IT staff".