2000 more tech jobs in India?
By John Abraham

UK’s biggest mortgage giant HBOS is making news due to an impending 12 billion pound takeover by Lloyds TSB as well as rumors that some Lloyd shareholders are resisting this alliance. But eleven top officials of HBOS including HBOS IT Director John Callan and head of IT sourcing Adam Warwick found time to fly to Bangalore, India to explore outsourcing tech jobs.

The IT and back office jobs are believed to be the ones to be taken off the UK site.

HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland)   already has one thousand people on the rolls in India. The management explains that this is just an extension of already existing facilities and has nothing to do with the jobs axed back on home turf. But the British tabloid Mirror reports that offshore delivery of IT functions is a central part of HBOS’s cost-cutting plans. There have been 28,000 jobs culled already, and 2000 of those are in IT.  There is also a report that the merger will cause more job losses. So, Halifax, West Yorkshire, Chester and Edinburgh stand to lose what will be the gain of Hyderabad, Bangalore or Sangli.

Meanwhile the unions have demanded that the off shoring plans be stalled in return for a support of the merger. The management assures that any decisions will be taken only after consultation with the unions but the off shore facilities under discussion are nothing new, they have been used for years.

The off shoring plans don’t look to be new ones; the executives have been visiting various cities of India a number of times already this year. Chennai saw them in January this year, and this is the fourth Bangalore visit, the executives dropped in once in May and twice in August this year. News website ‘The Register’ says that the HBOS sent them the following comment: “On a preliminary basis, we (HBOS) have been exploring for some time whether we should extend our use of overseas contracts in the area of software development and applications. Any extension to our current off shoring arrangements will only take place after full consultation with our union partners, Accord and Unite. No decisions have been taken. Separately, all HBOS customer service centers are based here in the UK and we have no plans to change that at all. Our work in this area is completely unconnected to the proposed acquisition by Lloyds TSB Group.

The comments to the article in the website ‘The Register’ have been volatile, one comment even said ‘The only reason I'm with Halifax is that they have a British-based call centre for their phone banking. If they outsource it to India, I'm moving banks. The last thing I need when trying to sort out my finances is a language barrier. I had enough problems when they trialed a voice recognition system...’. Another comment said ‘Its all very well saving a few quid, but if the UK keeps on like this India will be shipping menial jobs like call centre staff here in a generation's time.’

Whatever the reactions, Taj West End, Bangalore, the ultimate hospitality destination, played host and the executives flew business class on a trip worth 45000 pounds, so the intentions cannot be speculative but only real. The fine dine was at Blue Ginger, the classic Vietnamese restaurant which is the best outside Southeast Asia; so the ‘jolly’ might have seen some real deals discussed.

The Register article and comments can be seen at this link