Barclays has become the latest UK bank to admit that it is looking at outsourcing more functions to India to cut costs, risking problems with the trade unions over the export of jobs. UK banking union Unifi says that 1,700 Barclays jobs in the UK are now at risk. Barclays has already announced that 150 jobs would go to India from its UK business banking and credit card businesses. The sensitivity of the issue is evident in the fact that the bank now says it has both “no particular plans” and “no fixed plans” to shift any more work to the sub-continent.
Banks which have already outsourced work to India include Abbey National (IT), ABN Amro (call centre), American Express (financial accounting and data management), Citibank (retail banking), Deutsche Bank (payments processing), Goldman Sachs (IT), HSBC (transaction processing), Morgan Stanley (transaction support), Standard Chartered (retail banking), JP Morgan Chase (transaction processing), Capital One (customer services) and Lloyds TSB (call centre).
Insurers such as Aviva (call centres and claims processing), Axa (back office) and Prudential are joining them, or have plans to do so. Fund manager Fidelity has 250 staff in India already. A number of custodians and fund administrators, such as Mellon, have either shifted work to India or are now looking seriously at the opportunities to do so.
Barclays has also said that it is talking to Accenture about outsourcing IT work within the bank. Accenture has 1,000 employees in India already, and expects this figure to increase to 2,500 within two years.
HSBC attracted considerable adverse publicity in the UK earlier this year when it announced plans to shift 4,000 jobs from the UK to India within two and a half years.