U.K. insurance company Aviva is moving over 5,000 business process outsourcing staff from Indian service providers to Aviva Global Services, its offshore division in India.
The process is to be completed by January 2008, and will cover facilities set up by Indian suppliers in Bangalore and Pune in India, and Colombo in Sri Lanka, the company said Tuesday.
Aviva is the U.K.’s largest insurance group and the fifth-largest such company in the world, providing life and pension products to customers in Europe and elsewhere.
The proposed transition does not reflect dissatisfaction with current providers in India, but is part of a plan the U.K. company initiated in 2003 to outsource BPO work to Indian contractors under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, a spokeswoman for Aviva Global Services said Tuesday.
Under the BOT model, suppliers set up facilities with staff doing work for the U.K. firm, with the option to transfer the staff and facilities to Aviva at a later date.
Aviva will carry on outsourcing BPO work to its suppliers in India, the company spokeswoman said. ExlService Holdings will continue to have over 1,000 staff working for Aviva at a facility in Noida near Delhi. Another provider, 24/7 Customer of Bangalore, has set up a 1,400-seat facility in Chennai for Aviva. The facility in Chennai currently has 300 staff, which will be increased down the line, she added.
An offshore model that combines a company’s own employees with staff from suppliers offers the flexibility for quicker ramping up of worker numbers, and also introduces an element of competition, the spokeswoman said.
Aviva has also announced that it will have 7,800 BPO staff in India and Sri Lanka by the end of next year. This number includes both staff of Aviva Global Services and staff of suppliers working for Aviva.
