In a first move of its kind and size in the Indian BPO industry, Aviva is demonstrating its commitment to India by transferring over 5000 third party BPO vendor staff to its own offshore division, Aviva Global Services over the next year.
In a first move of its kind and size in the Indian BPO industry, Aviva is demonstrating its commitment to India by transferring over 5000 third party BPO vendor staff to its own offshore division, Aviva Global Services (AGS) over the next year.
Aviva, UK’s largest insurance company and the world’s fifth largest, had previously announced its plans to grow to 7800 BPO roles in the subcontinent by end 2007. Offshoring has been a key component of Aviva’s global growth strategy providing it with flexibility, productivity, process and cost efficiency while maintaining the high quality of customer servicing expected.
Aviva has built the offshore BPO roles in partnership with three vendor partners – EXL, WNS and 24/7 Customer. John Ainley, chairman AGS, based in London said: “This is but one transaction in our strong relationship with our three BPO partners. The transition is expected to be seamless and transparent to the UK business units, our employees as also to the end customers.”
Currently Aviva has operations in Noida (NCR), Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Colombo (Sri Lanka). In sequence the transfers will cover Bangalore, Colombo and Pune with the Aviva - 24/7 customer facility in Bangalore being the first to be fully transferred by 1 January 2007. The remaining transfers will be completed by 1 January 2008 in partnership with WNS and EXL. The transfers would only cover the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) organizations – NCOP, WNS Colombo and Ntrance, created specifically for the purpose of transfer, by EXL and WNS respectively.
Speaking on the occasion, Rajnish Virmani, CEO, Aviva Global Services, said: “These are exciting times for us as we go through this process of transfer. This is not a change of direction but merely executing a well laid out plan. While the plan even at the start of the offshore journey in 2003 was to have a mostly proprietary (captive) business, the BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) contracts with these partners have enabled Aviva to ramp up rapidly and gain the 'speed to market'.”
PV Kannan, co-founder and CEO, 24/7 Customer, said: “We are proud to be associated with Aviva Global Services, especially since we have been successful in building a model center of excellence in Bangalore. We are excited and proud that we were able to successfully build the operations meeting their aggressive demands and are now in a position to hand over the operations to them in what is perhaps the first such deal in India. Our relationship with Aviva continues to be as strong as ever and we’ve recently commenced the new Chennai operations with Aviva.”
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Press contact:
Anuja Agarwal, head of communications
Aviva Global Services
Telephone: +91 98220-91002
Notes to editors:
About Aviva
Aviva is one of the leading providers of life and pensions to Europe with substantial positions in other markets around the world, making it the world’s fifth largest insurance group based on gross worldwide premiums at 31 December 2005. Aviva’s principal business activities are long-term savings, fund management and general insurance, with worldwide total sales of Ł36 billion and assets under management of Ł322 billion at 31 December 2005. The Aviva media centre at www.aviva.com/media includes images, logos, company and product information and a news release archive.
About 24/7 Customer
24/7 Customer is the first BPO company that provides integrated customer lifecycle management services through a ‘Multi-shoreTM global delivery model’ and is number one in business performance to 70% of its clients globally. Founded in April 2000, 24/7 employs over 7000 professionals across it’s offices in India, the US and UK and the nine global delivery centers in India, Philippines and Guatemala. The facilities support approximately 9000 seats and are equipped with state-of-the-art physical, telecom and infrastructure to ensure smooth handling of over 8 million transactions per month.