Best Insurance

600 call centre jobs shored back to the UK – Has India lost its shine?(08-Jul-2011)

In the last week, two major companies have announced that they are closing the job centres in India and bringing the jobs back to the UK.

Santander, UK’s third largest banks will be creating 500 of these UK-based jobs. As of this month, all the calls will be dealt by staff based at its call centres in Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool. Abbey – as the bank was known before the Spanish group Banco Santander bought it and re-branded it to Santander moved most of its call centre operations to two centres in India – Bangalore and Pune.

The other company that has decided to move its operations from India is New Call Telecom, who have announced that they are opening a call centre in Burnley, Lancashire. They are closing their call centre in Mumbai and transferring the jobs to Mumbai.Contrary to popular opinions, the decision of Santander was not due to the accent or language barriers but was more due to reasons of customer dis-satisfaction which led Santander topping the complaints published by the FSA.

The one other key factor that was highlighted by both Santander and New Com is that India which was once attractive due to its low cost and highly productive labour is not the case anymore. Real estate rents in India are now comparable to the UK and if the other factors such as double digit inflation and costs of managing an off-shore entity are considered, there is no cost advantage for offshoring. The oft repeated phrase by some politicians “British jobs for British People” may be a reality soon, not because of any major policy change by the government or any new legislation but pure market forces.

Kesh Thukaram, Director of Best Insurance commented on these latest developments and said, “We are Best Insurance firmly believe in having all our call centre and customer activities in the UK and are fully committed in supporting the local communities we live in. The cost advantage approach by banks based on an economy such as India which has a very buoyant local market and double digit inflation was always going to be short-lived.”

Best Insurance is of the largest retailers of protection insurance and has one the widest range of Income Protection and Payment Protection products. The specialists at Best Insurance are trained to offer customers a choice of products depending on their individual circumstance and are acknowledged in the market for their quality of support especially in the areas of accident, sickness and unemployment insurance and redundancy covers.