IBM Corp.’s long-term ambitions revolve around growth areas such as cloud computing and analytics, but its battle-hardened professional services business remains a vital source of revenue.

The Financial Times reported today that the division’s next major contribution could be a £1.3 billion ($1.58 billion) outsourcing deal with Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group plc. It cited a Sunday newsletter from the Lloyds Trade Union, which has about 35,000 members, as claiming that the deal will see much of the financial giant’s technology assets transferred to Big Blue along with the personnel that manages them.

A total of 1,961 workers are set to be affected, according to the leaked memo. The group includes a mix of permanent staff, contractors and third-party providers based mostly in the U.K. Lloyds expects to save almost £760 million ($930 million) over the agreement’s planned seven-year duration. Furthermore, the bank hopes that handing over the reins to IBM will put it in a better position to take advantage of new data center technologies as they emerge.

But despite its lofty objectives, the agreement has insiders worried. The Lloyds Trade Union’s newsletter claims that IBM will start laying off transferred personnel within 12 months of the deal going into effect and plans to retain only 193 of the 1,961 affected employees by the four-year mark. From there, the bulk of the work is set to be handled by 993 offshore staffers belonging to its internal professional services division.

One of the arguments that the union has made against the deal is that outsourcing the internal systems where Lloyds keeps its financial data may increase the risk of hacking. Cybersecurity already represents a pain point for the bank, which was hit by a massive distributed denial of service earlier this year that left customers unable to access key services for over 48 hours. IBM can be expected to argue that it’s ready to take on the challenge.

The technology giant manages numerous large-scale outsourcing projects for companies such as Fiat Automobiles S.p.A. and German flagship carrier Lufthansa AG, which signed a similar deal in 2014 to the one Lloyds is reportedly negotiating. Moreover, Big Blue giant boasts an extensive portfolio of security tools that have likely been brought up during the talks as well.

Lloyds and IBM are expected to announce the deal in the coming days.

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