Who is really benefiting from offshore call centres ?

The British banking industry was scrambling to restore consumer confidence and tighten security yesterday, after a ring of Indian call centre workers was exposed for selling private information from UK bank accounts.

Lloyds TSB, like many other big banks, has sub-contracted its call centre operations to India, where cheap labour and favourable tax laws save the company millions each year. And while some banking officials reaffirmed their faith in the practice yesterday, City of London police warned that cases of identity theft from Indian call centres were not new phenomena.

Steven Philippsohn, senior partner and head of fraud litigation at the London law firm Philippsohn Crawfords and Berwald, warned that companies risked exposing the confidential information by outsourcing call centres.

"The hazard with offshore operations is that data protection laws are often not in place and are difficult to enforce," he said.

Alex Brown
Friday June 24 2005
The Guardian