Norwich Union moves more IT jobs to India

Norwich Union is outsourcing 500 IT jobs - most of them to India - as part of company-wide plans to save £250m per year by 2008.

The IT roles will be outsourced to Norwich Union's main Indian offshore partners, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro, with some work also going to CSC. Norwich Union currently has around 1,400 IT jobs outsourced to India since it started doing so in 2004.

The insurance giant is also cutting 200 IT contractors who currently work on short-term contracts as part of a total of 4,000 job cuts across the finance, HR and marketing functions of the company.

Norwich Union's retained UK in-house IT headcount will fall from 3,000 to 2,500 as a result of the cuts which, after the standard consultation period, are expected to be complete by the second or third quarter next year.

Alex Robinson, CIO at Norwich Union, told silicon.com the move is a balance between lowering costs and retaining core IT skills in-house.

He said: "This isn't the outsourcing of the whole IT function. The in-house IT function is core to our business and working alongside the IT workforce at our global partners. It is a balance between the two. The challenge we have got is that insurance is a commodity market. We have to keep our cost base highly competitive."

Whereas Norwich Union's existing offshore outsourcing to date has focused mainly on application maintenance and development, Robinson said the latest roles to be sent to India will cover a wider range of roles across the whole spectrum of IT activity including IT architecture and design.

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Robinson added that global sourcing of skills and resources will continue to be an important trend for IT departments.

He said: "I expect IT in a big business like ours to be a global function. Geography is becoming increasingly irrelevant."

Finance trade union Amicus has reacted angrily to the cuts calling them "brutal".