UK general insurer Norwich Union's CEO, Simon Machell, has reportedly pledged that no more job transfers to India are to occur, but said that there were no plans to relocate back to the UK.
Cited in This Is Money, Mr Machell has stated that the present number of 7,800 employees in India was the ‘right level.’
In January 2007, the insurance firm announced that it had transferred some of its Indian call center work back to the UK as a result of increased customer complaints over calls being connected to India.
The decision to halt the job transfers comes a few months after the company announced a cut in 850 jobs in Norwich and a further 4,000 nationwide as a result of the transferal of posts abroad, where costs are reported to be 40% lower than in the UK.
According to This Is Money, Mr Machell was said to have defended the use of overseas call centers and claimed that customer satisfaction levels were the same in relation to calls handled in the UK or India. Those who complained that they had difficulties understanding the workers in India were only a minority.
This Is Money also quotes Mr Machell as saying, I don’t believe we’ve got an issue. If we believed we had a huge problem, it would not make business sense to keep going with it.