Exclusive: Barclays nears £450m offshore outsourcing deal with Accenture

Barclays is set to sign a £450m IT outsourcing deal with Accenture that could see hundreds of software development jobs moved to India.

Barclays has selected Accenture over IBM and is now in final negotiations with the firm over a six-year contract for the outsourcing of the bank's 'Build Services' application development group.

silicon.com understands from a source that the contract will be worth some £75m per year and more than 1,000 software development jobs at Barclays' sites in Poole, Bexley Heath and Radbroke will be affected by the agreement, with up to half of those likely to be moved to India.

There will also be a "significant" reduction in the number of jobs, which will be mainly contractor positions, after the transfer. Financial services union Unifi is in discussions with Barclays and Accenture to ensure there are no compulsory redundancies.

Unifi, which represents two-thirds of Barclays' 9,000 IT staff, wants the bank's redundancy terms - which include commitments to voluntary redundancy and redeployment - to be adopted by Accenture for the transferred staff for the life of the contract.

A Unifi spokesman said discussions are "constructive" and will cover areas of compulsory redundancies, social responsibility safeguards and redeployment.

"We are hopeful of a good deal for Build Services. Hopefully we are going to conclude discussions before the end of the year," he told silicon.com.

Barclays admitted it is talking to Accenture but said no contracts have yet been signed. A spokesman told silicon.com that there will be no compulsory redundancies.

"We've run a number of briefings to staff telling people where we are going with this. It's still a bit early to talk about specifics and whether there will be an offshore element but there would not be any compulsory redundancies as a result of any offshoring," he said.

The latest Barclays deal follows an explosion of financial services firms looking to cut costs by outsourcing IT services to low-cost offshore centres such as India. Earlier this month insurance group Aviva angered the union Amicus when it announced it will move 2,500 jobs from Norwich Union to India during 2004.

Accenture said it is unable to comment on ongoing discussions and IBM declined to comment.