Amex Financial Unit In India Is Its Largest

The American Express Financial Centre in India has emerged the bank's largest financial centre in the world. Located in Delhi, it has engaged 1,000 employees, up from 600 two years ago. "It is a big landmark for us," American Express Financial Centre (East) vice-president & general manager, Sanjay Gupta, said.

Apart from Delhi, American Express has two more financial centres: at Phoenix, Arizona, in the US, and at Burgess Hill near Brighton in the UK. While the financial centre at Phoenix employs around 600 people, the one at Burgess Hill has a strength of 400. Both of these were set up before the Delhi centre.

With two-thirds of the globe being taken care of (the Americas and Europe-West Asia, respectively) by the two financial centres in the US and the UK, the Japan-Asia Pacific region still needed to be covered. The decision to come to India for this venture was in many ways prompted by the success American Express had already experienced in the country with its other business lines.

India was selected as the location for the east following a comprehensive site selection process that included the evaluation of 14 Pacific Rim countries. What clinched the issue in favour of India was that the country was on an economic upswing, government policies were friendly to foreign investment, and the country was emerging as a prime market in the region. Particularly attractive to American Express was the high skill-bank in the predominantly English speaking job market, the geographic gateway that India offers and the overall economics of doing business here. Thus, the Delhi financial centre came up in December, 1993.

The financial centre fulfills many of the fiduciary responsibilities of the American Express organisation -- it manages various ancillary processes critical to its core businesses. These are activities that support the revenue generating engine of the company, such as capture and settlement of its card and travel transactions; payment to establishments and airlines that honour the American Express card; the distribution of plastics, purchasing and real estate and facilities management.

According to Gupta, the processes in the centre are comparable with the best in the world. The centre employs over 100 chartered accountants apart from 50-odd MBAs and engineers. It also employs people proficient in languages such as Japanese to deal with overseas clients.