MphasiS plays down deal termination impact with Santander

Information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing services (BPO) provider MphasiS today said the decision of Santander UK to terminate its retail banking-related call centre contract will not have any significant impact on the company.

“The revenue impact on MphasiS due to the contract termination will be insignificant and below 0.5 per cent,” the company said in a statement, adding the contract was to come to an end in the third quarter (July-Sept) of 2011.

Santander UK, a full-service retail and commercial bank and a wholly-owned unit of Spain's Banco Santander SA had outsourced its call centre operations to MphasiS in 2003. Last week, the company said it would move the call-center services to the UK since its customers felt frustrated dealing with offshore call centre.

In its accounting year ended December 31, 2010, MphasiS posted revenues of Rs 5,037 crore ($1.09 billion). Presently, Europe contributes about 19 per cent of MphasiS’ annual revenues.

MphasiS managed Santander's services from two centres – Bangalore and Pune. It, however, declined to give the number of people employed in these centres.

Replying to an email query by Business Standard, Santander UK’s Head of Corporate Communications, Anthony Frost said the company has decided “to cease all external suppliers of call centre services, not just in India”. He said all retail banking calls of the bank would be handled by its own staff based in Glasgow, Leicester and Liverpool.

MphasiS’ share price closed at Rs 439.2 on the Bombay Stock Exchange today.