Lloyds Banking Group cuts IT spend by £82m

Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has reduced its yearly IT spend by six per cent to £1.2bn as the financial giant continues to integrate Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

According to the bank’s results released today, the cost reduction of £82m has been achieved through the consolidation of IT operations across the group as well as lower investment spend as project activity was replaced by integration work.

LBG said it is "making good progress" towards integrating the entire organisation, with preparations for data migration in "full flight".

“Detailed plans are in place, along with testing requirements that are fully commensurate with an integration of this scale,” the bank said in its annual financial statement.

At the bank’s wholesale arm, for example, the initial planning and organisational design stage has been finished, major decisions related to systems have been made and the first product migrations have also been completed.

LBG said that a core focus area for 2010 is planning and execution of additional product migrations and enhancing its risk systems.

However, the taxpayer-supported bank recorded a £6.3bn loss, largely due to a £24bn impairment on legacy HBOS assets.

LBG said that the "overwhelming majority" of its job cuts in 2009 were achieved through re-deployment, "natural turnover" and voluntary redundancy, while a small amount left via compulsory redundancy.

IT workers were among the worst-hit by the cull.