HSBC Moves 840 IT Jobs From UK To China, India And Poland

HSBC is axing 840 IT jobs in the UK and will transfer the positions to India, China and Poland by March next year as part of a wider, ongoing restructure at the bank.

TechWeekEurope understands the majority of roles impacted are based in Sheffield, London and Tankersley in South Yorkshire and that staff will be supported through the transition. Other sites include Birmingham and Leeds, but Sheffield will be most affected with 595 losses.

It is thought that HSBC’s IT operations will continue to be hit by ongoing cost cutting measures. HSBC has more than 47,000 UK employees – 8,000 of which will be let go by the end of the year. Globally, the company has 266,000 staff.

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HSBC job cuts

“In our investor update in June 2015, and many times since, we have stated that we are targeting significant cost reductions by the end of 2017,” said John Hackett, COO of HSBC UK.

“As part of a global relocation exercise, around 840 non-customer-facing IT roles will transfer from the UK to other sites around the world by the end of March 2017.

“The UK will continue to play an important role in HSBC’s global IT infrastructure, employing several thousand IT professionals.”

“HSBC’s decision to axe so many IT jobs is as ruthless as it is reckless,” said Dominic Hook, Unite national officer for firnance. “For almost a year staff have been left in the dark about their futures, only to be told that before being shown the door they’re expected to train someone in India or China who will do their job for less money. It’s a deeply cynical move by a bank which wants to be an ‘Employer of Choice’.

“Offshoring IT jobs to so-called ‘low cost economies’ is extremely short sighted. As IT glitches across the banks continue to prove, it is ultimately the customers who will suffer the consequences.

“Unite will continue to support our members throughout this process and work with our sister international trade unions to end this cynical race to the bottom.”

HSBC has rolled out biometric banking and support for Apple Pay in the past year, but customers have had to endure a number of IT failures that have stopped them from being paid or accessing their account.

In January, a “complex technical issue” stopped millions of customers from accessing online banking services, while a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack later that month had a similar effect.

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