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Barclaycard axes 630 contact centre jobs

It has been announced that Barclaycard is shutting its contact centre in Manchester with the loss of 630 jobs because it will be routing more customer queries to India.

The credit card arm of Barclays has decided to outsource more work to Mumbai and Delhi at a time when other financial services firms, notably Lloyds TSB, have decided to return customer contact centres back to the UK. Finance union Amicus said it was opposing the decision to shut the Manchester centre but said it was continuing to meet with the bank.

"At a time of increasing pressure on all staff in Barclaycard we believe it to be totally inappropriate for this large and highly profitable employer to be announcing closures and job losses," said Steve Pantak, an Amicus official.

While the Barclays group reported pre-tax profits of £7bn, the Barclaycard credit card arm had a more torrid time, reporting a 40% fall in profits to £382m because of a hefty provision to cover customers' unpaid debts.

Barclaycard did not give any information about how much it hoped to save as result of the closure but Antony Jenkins, the new chief executive of the credit card business, cited global factors as one of the reasons for moving business to India. "Decisions like this are never easy and we will be doing everything we can to support those affected. Barclaycard's business is becoming more global and to stay successful we must change how we operate to reflect this," Mr Jenkins said.

Barclaycard receives up to 50,000 contacts a day from its customers in the UK and until now these had largely been received in Manchester and Teesside although two out of 10 calls were already being routed to Indian contact centres.

From July 16, when Manchester will shut, the contacts that would have been taken there will be directed to Teesside and India, where Barclaycard is expecting to create another 200 jobs.

Barclaycard will continue to pay Manchester staff for another three months after the centre closes and is offering them help with finding new roles, possibly inside the wider Barclays group.

19th March 2007
March 2007 - Barclaycard - Axes 630 contact centre jobs