ANZ Bank may outsource more jobs to India

ANZ Bank, a major Australian financial institution, may outsource more back-office work of its Asian operations to its Bangalore facility.

To start with, it is contemplating to outsource 400 non-voice based jobs from Australia over the next eight to 10 months. ANZ had 2,000 employees across 14 countries in Asia, including China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, among others.

“We are the largest Australian bank in the Asia Pacific region,” said Shane Freeman, managing director, ANZ Operations, Technology and Shared Services (OTSS) India. He said the jobs were being outsourced to India primarily to achieve higher levels of efficiency as well as a wage arbitrage.

 

ANZ has a capacity of 4,000 people at its two campuses in Bangalore and it expects to fill up these positions by 2012-13. At present, 2,600 people work in Bangalore. ANZ OTSS India started with around 500 people and the operations were scaled up in the last two years, Freeman said.

In addition to the routine back-end operations, it is looking to shift higher value-added jobs to India such as those related to analytics and human resources (HR) activities such as payroll management and job evaluations. The bank, however, did not outsource voice-based jobs outside Australia and New Zealand as its customers insisted on talking to Australian staff only.

ANZ has also started work to obtain a banking licence in the country and had filed an application to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) a year ago seeking permission to start retail and commercial banking activities in India.

Standard Chartered Bank had taken over the operations of ANZ Grindlays in West Asia and South Asia and the associated private banking business of Grindlays for $1.34 billion in 2000.