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EXCLUSIVE: IT job fears grow at RBS

Bill Magee | Friday March 13, 2009



There is a growing buzz around the RBS water cooler that mass IT jobs losses are imminent.
 
The tech industry has been bracing itself for bad news with rumours rife that up to thousands of jobs are set to go at the bank, starting as early as April 1.  IT forms the RBS backbone consisting of a mixture of permanent and contractor roles.
 
Reports have grown that Indian outsourcing technology services global specialists, Infosys Technologies of Bangalore, is carrying out technology-related exercises within the bank; perhaps as a precursor to further outsourcing of IT functions currently handled internally by RBS.
 
While an RBS spokeswoman refused to comment on the “speculation”, she said: "There are no outsourcing/job losses...we're tendering IT work which we do every year.  Infosys is a current supplier and one of those included in the tender."
 
There is a growing feeling that the bank is in an advanced stage to outsource significant numbers of banking technology jobs, accelerating the timing of mass jobs cuts within the bank’s vast global empire. Sources both within and near to RBS fear a jobs cull appears to be still on the cards, as the bank scales back its worldwide operations amidst unprecedented financial losses.
 
This particular bank's reach is of an eyewatering scale.
 
It ranges from RBS itself, NatWest, Ulster Bank and Citizens, to First Active, The One Account and, of course, ABM Amro, all operating within its personal banking portfolio.
 
On the insurance side there's Direct Line, Churchill, Privilege, Devit, RBS Finsure, NIG, Green Flag, IGIS and UKI Partnerships.
 
Then we have the sprawling credit cards side of the business, including RBS Cards US & UK, NatWest, MINT, Lombard Direct, Direct Line Financial Services and Tesco Personal Finance.
 
Infosys has worked with RBS since 2002 on several key initiatives involving a significant number of the above.
 
One source tells me that at least “an entire floor” of the bank’s office space have been given over to Infosys staff currently engaged in who knows what?

RBS employs around 6,500 IT workers in its UK operations alone and another insider claimed: “They (Infosys) are over here to prepare the bank’s tech systems, with the fear that they will ship as much as possible back to India lock stock and PC.”

He spoke of the bank’s recent announcement to scale back from almost half of the near-60 countries in which it operates.
 
“Infosys has nine development centres in India and 50 offices worldwide, many which overlap the bank’s own ‘profit centres.’ So integration is not difficult to pull off.”

The rapid expansion of RBS over the past decade has led to what a source close to the bank described as “anything but efficient” bolt-on legacy IT systems.

“Pulling together all the countless back office systems to support bank tellers, networks, servers and wires has over the years resulted in a bit of a mess, to put it bluntly.
 
“Now, at least, the bank can modernise the technology side of its operations,” he added.
 
Time will tell what this means in terms of medium-to-long IT permanent and contractor jobs security at RBS…

billmagee@btconnect.com

 

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