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Working a passage to India Stephen Womack and Richard Dyson, Mail on Sunday 31 October 2004
WHAT could be more British than the Kent Reliance building society? The very name reflects solid values with its headquarters set in the garden county overlooking the Medway and historic Royal Dockyard at Chatham.
But the powerhouse of its business is now 5,000 miles away in an office with a view of - coconut palms.
Kent Reliance is one of the few mutually owned UK financial services businesses to have embraced the idea of outsourcing to India. With only 75 staff, half of them in India, it is also one of the smallest.
Much of the society's paperwork is handled in an office 20 minutes' drive from the centre of Bangalore. Application forms are scanned in Britain and sent electronically to India. Letters written in India print out in Chatham for posting.
Now the society has set up a call centre at the offices of its Bangalore partner, Process Mind.
Many building societies believe that going offshore is a betrayal of their founding aims, but Kent Reliance chief executive Mike Lazenby argues otherwise. 'Our first responsibility is to members,' he says. 'We're here to help them buy their own homes as cheaply as possible.'
The society has slashed staffing costs by almost a fifth by switching work to India. Lazenby says: 'We are operating in a competitive market. We are trying to put the infrastructure in place to trade on a margin of just 0.5 percentage points. The industry average is 1.15 percentage points.'
The margin is essentially the difference between what the society pays savers and what it charges borrowers.
Though costs in India are low, many customers on the receiving end of overseas services are unhappy. They complain of cultural gaps and struggle to understand accents. Many doubt that operators based thousands of miles away can really understand British customers.
But Kent Reliance has a unique formula. Everyone who works for the society in Bangalore spends up to two months in Kent learning about the business and its customers and experiencing everyday life in Britain. The trainees live in Chatham, work at head office and visit its branches.
Larissa Rodriguez, 19, is a recent recruit. After initial training in Bangalore, she arrived in Kent last month. She says: 'One thing I have learned from my time in Britain is that customers may be irate, but you cannot always tell by the tone of their voice. I think I will be much more confident at work when I return home.' Just as important for Larizza is understanding day-to-day lifehere. She says: 'We visited Bluewater shopping centre near Dartford. It was incredible. There is nothing like that at home.'
Another trainee, Manju, 20 Kamdarial, previously worked for insurer Admiral, which also has operations in Bangalore. Manju, 20, says; 'I feel the time spent here has helped me to relate to customer in a way that was difficult in my previous job'
Lazenby says the training has repeated rewards. he says ' Our overseas service standard is 99.7 percent correct. We couldn't get anything like that quality in the UK. In India, the belief is that you stay until the work is done.'
In another related story in the same paper pretty photo and cation Raquel Gambian is happy to earn as basic wage of £155 a month at the Norwich Union call centre in Bangalore.
http://www.thisismoney.com/20041031/ht84096.html - abbreviated version.
Cheers,
Gabe.
