Aussie banks support 'offshoring' to India

Melbourne, Nov 4 (UNI) Indian BPOs are in for more Australian financial services work as the two of the largest Australian banks have indicated sending more projects to low-cost countries like India.

The strong defence of 'offshoring' by the chiefs of ANZ and Westpac banks has come close on the heels of Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry blasting the opponnets of sending jobs to overseas low-wage workers.

ANZ Bank is leading its Australian counterparts in using Indian IT and financial services workers to back its antipodean and overseas operations.

The Australian bank is currently employing 1,400 workers in its Bangalore center.

The ANZ Bank chief John McFarlane, for these reasons, is more vocal in defending sending such workload to destinations like India. The head of the leading Australian bank has also expressed his understanding of critics' perspective.

''We understand the issue about Bangalore - people don't like jobs being moved from Australia to India,'' he told media yesterday.

He has also justified using Indian Information Technology and financial services personnel on the grounds that a sizeable chunk of the bank revenue is generated from overseas resources.

''But I keep reminding people that one-third of the bank is outside Australia, so we will have one-third of our people working outside Australia,'' John McFarlane told Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation reporters.

Westpac chief David Morgan has also expressed similar sentiments.

''As the Australian economy grows, we're going to have a labour shortage,'' Dr Morgan said. ''We have to make sure we keep the high-skill jobs and export the low-skill ones.'' The open and blunt pro-offshoring stances taken by the financial gurus in the past two days has taken the opponents of such strategies by surprise.

ANZ Bank chief may have been encouraged by the the Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry's speech defending 'offshoring' moves by almost all the industrialised world, Australia included, also has much to gain from offshoring - most obviously through a lowering of costs to business and, ultimately, consumers,'' Dr Henry had told the 'Making the Boom Pay' conference in Melbourne on Thursday.

The top Australian government official had gone to the extent of labeling the noises made by the overseas outsourcing opponents as 'protectionist nostrums' that were used to support high tariff barriers.

The Finance Sector Union is leading the opposition claiming that 50,000 of the industry's 280,000 jobs could move overseas.

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