Lloyds, RBS ditching more tech workers

And more likely soon

Lloyds has announced over 500 more jobs cuts, hard on the heels of Royal Bank of Scotland's announcement it is laying off 221 techies at its Dublin Technology Centre.

The Dublin centre is to shut later this year with the loss of 196 jobs and 25 posts in Belfast will also go. Some people will be transferred to other RBS offices.

The bank said it would offer staff redeployment where possible and try and keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum, ComputerWorld reported. The cuts will start in July.

Meanwhile Lloyds is laying of 585 people as a result of the closure of its personal loan centres. This could be more controversial because the bank is controlled by the British government.

It is also expected that Lloyds will lay off hundreds more staff as its merger with Halifax Bank of Scotland goes ahead. Lloyds has historically been a big fan of outsourcing, with hundreds of back office staff based in India.

Bank of Scotland IT staff are expecting wide ranging job cuts, although we're also hearing from staff who have left already rather than wait for redundancy.

Big job cuts could come back to haunt the government.

Of course HBOS was not a total stranger to outsourcing - Computacenter dealt with all its desktop estate, and the reseller is also advising on integration problems still being dealt with as a result of the Halifax, Bank of Scotland merger. ®