Norwich Union has tightened up security at its Indian call centres, following a review of its offshore operations.
The UK insurance company conducted a review of procedures at its Indian operations last year, and an internal report recommended improvements to the firm's information security policy.
Out of its total workforce of 30,000, Norwich Union currently employs around 5,000 staff in India. One-third work in customer-facing roles in call centres, with the rest working in back-office functions such as IT.
A spokesman for Norwich Union said the changes were part of regular reviews of all parts of the company's business. "There were some issues in India and they are being addressed," he said.
But he dismissed reports the company could have lost up to £10m and been fined by industry regulator the Financial Services Authority as "rubbish".
He added that most of the recommendations in the report were minor and that most have been already been addressed.
In an interview with silicon.com last month, Norwich Union chief information officer Alex Robinson said half of the company's IT work will be done in India by the end of this year, as part of companywide plans to slash £250m off the group's £2bn operating costs.
Robinson said cost and flexibility are the key competitive advantages Norwich Union gets from offshoring IT work to India.
"There is a labour cost differential, the Indian work is cheaper," he said. "The other advantage, and the one that persists almost irrespective of where labour costs go, is the flexibility we get from tapping into the offshore workforce and the offshore suppliers. We can ramp up or ramp down the work that's going on with those companies in a reasonably quick and easy way."
Talkback
Well done to Norwich Union for taking measures to improve their security - although procedures should have been watertight in the first place!
Companies often make the mistake that once a process is offshored, minimal management is needed, but this isn’t the case – because of the distance, increased management is required. Norwich Union are realising this. This extra management should ensure that company procedures are adhered to in every location, not only in Indian locations.
India is in the process of formalising its equivalent of the Data Protection Act but in the meantime, Indian companies (and other offshore locations) are falling over themselves in a bid to demonstrate compliance. Security breaches occur when a more lackadaisical approach is taken to management - aned it is good to see that Norwich Union are tightening proceedings!
i still don't think our data taken out of this country is safe, ok its cheaper, but have you ever tried to ring a company that has call centre's
in other country like india, and explain what you want or problems you have, some people can't understand what the call centre person is saying so get really worked up, i have seen this a few times, more often than not i can understand the call centre person's, but if its a bad line, or your try to explain something about the area you live in, you may as well bang you head against a brick wall, as they have no idea what your talking about, with them not living here etc.
then there is "they are taking our jobs thing" call centres in uk shutting moving to india.
there are a lot of people out there that hate ringing the call centres because of some of the problems above.