The UK-based banking and financial services giant, Abbey National which marked its exit from India by offloading its 35 per cent stake in IDBI Home finance a couple of months back, has come back once again, but in a different form.

Abbey has firmed up plans of moving as many as 100 data processing jobs from Edinburgh and Glasgow in the UK to Bangalore in a bid to cut costs.

Also Read Outsourcing and India

To this effect it has already entered into negotiations with multi-national outsourcing company MsourceE for a pilot project that will see some of its data input process for its new business, transferred from the two offices to Bangalore by the end of the year.

Official spokesperson for the Abbey Group, Christina Mills, in an answer to a questionnaire however clarified, "The work that was to be transferred was straightforward administration and did not involve direct contact with customers or their advisers."

She also explained that MsourceE will work alongside teams in Glasgow and Edinburgh to run operations side by side across the sites for as long as is necessary to ensure that service quality is maintained before, during and immediately after the transfer.

"Redeployment and filling existing vacancies at the sites mean that no redundancies will result from this announcement," she added.

The transfer was part of Abbey's plan for outsourcing including relocation of UK functions to more scaleable sites. The firm has taken an principle decision to offshore some telephone and processing operations to India.