THE number of staff employed by British financial institutions in countries where labour is cheap has expanded rapidly in the past five years. Anyone phoning their bank or insurance company stands a high chance of being put through to a call centre in Bombay, Chennai or Bangalore.
According to estimates, British companies employ as many as 300,000 staff in cheap overseas locations such as India and China. The staff, whose wages are a tenth of their British equivalents, tend to work in call centres or in back-office administration. Research for Amicus, the financial services union, showed last November that 18,000 jobs had been switched overseas in a 12-month period since October 2003.
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The union said that the switch had cost the economy £2.7 billion in lost income. It has also predicted that a further 12,000 jobs would be switched before October this year. India, in particular, which has a large, highly educated population, has benefited from British companies looking to outsource to low-cost countries.
HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, was one of the first to begin processing some of its work overseas. It opened its first centre in 1999, and at the end of last December, it employed 4,900 staff overseas working on British accounts. A spokeswoman for the bank said that it had never had any security breaches of any kind during the six years that it has been using offshore centres.
Other banks were reserving judgment on safety until they had carried out investigations. Barclays, which has 1,000 people in offshore centres, said: “We are taking these allegations very seriously and are investigating the matter.”
A spokesman at Lloyds TSB, which employs an estimated 1,500 in offshore centres, said: “Our staff never have sight of sensitive information.”
MONEY TALKS
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HSBC: 4,900 staff working in offshore call centres
Lloyds TSB: 1,500 working offshore in call centres
Barclays: 1,000 people working offshore offering technical help and online processing
Aviva: 4,000 staff offshore dealing with claims sales and advice
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HBOS: no offshore call centres
RBS/Natwest: no offshore call centres