Australian bank may outsource more IT jobs to India
Tuesday, 20 November 2007, 20:30 IST
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Sydney: The National Australia Bank (NAB), one of Australia's leading banks, is considering outsourcing more IT jobs to India, causing much ire among its IT workforce here. According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday, NAB is considering proposals that threaten the jobs of about 400 IT employees, causing angst throughout the bank's 2,700-strong IT workforce. In recent months, the IT outsourcing bandwagon has lost its momentum, but the SMH said that internal documents show earlier this year NAB hired TPI, a leading global advisory firm for helping organisations optimise their business operations through best combinations of outsourcing, to ask IT providers to suggest options for three of its IT units. Infosys, Satyam, IBM and Accenture all submitted proposals, which are now under consideration. A high-level NAB team visited the three companies in India last month, the SMH report said. NAB's spokeswoman Kerrina Lawrence told IANS: "NAB like many Australian companies regularly reviews its business. In order to become more efficient, there are a number of options that NAB considers, including off-shoring and outsourcing to local and international suppliers." Jobs for offshore outsourcing include enterprise information management and software development, which employ about 400 people. It has caused concern among the staff because SMH reported that another internal document says every IT position could be "assessed over time". Lawrence told IANS, "The internal communiqué is to keep staff up to date that NAB has a request for proposal in the marketplace. It has sought to outline to staff, if there is any change, it will impact their role." In the past two years, NAB has sent 374 back-office jobs overseas and a good proportion of them are in India. During this period, the bank has added about 900 jobs to its Australian regional workforce. Earlier, the Finance Sector Union warned NAB customers to be concerned as their personal details may be going offshore. But Lawrence told IANS, "Currently, NAB is not outsourcing customer roles. We have outsourced credit card and personal loan jobs, and some finance and accounting jobs to Accenture in Bangalore. "NAB wants to be very clear that any work, whether it is carried out locally or overseas by NAB suppliers, must comply with Australia's strict privacy, security and privacy requirements," she added. NAB has 55,000 global suppliers. Other Australian banks that have outsourced IT jobs to India include ANZ, Westpac, St George and the Commonwealth Bank.
Source: IANS
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