NEW DELHI (XFN-ASIA) - India's outsourcing industry will be able to process up to 30 pct of US bank transactions by 2010, more than triple the current figure, the industry's main lobby group was reported as saying.
'Currently, 8 pct of US banking transactions are processed by Indian BPOs (business process outsourcing) and the figure has the potential to rise up to 30 pct by 2010,' National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) president Kiran Karnik said in a report carried by Agence France-Presse.
Karnik dismissed fears about data security protection in India, saying research by US-based Forrester Research consultancy in 2005 showed there were more security breaches in the UK and in the United States than in India.
The watchdog of the British banking industry, the Banking Code Standards Board, had scrutinised standards at Indian call centers and declared them to be among the world's best, he added.
Foreign financial institutions and firms have been moving backoffice, call center and other software-related work to India to take advantage of its English-speaking, lower-paid employees and cut costs.
But there has been growing concern about potential fraud in the industry which NASSCOM forecasts will grow by about 50 pct annually for the next four to five years and security has turned into a key issue.
There have been two cases in India of breaches in data security in the last 18 months and in both instances police made arrests in the case, Karnik said.
Earlier this month, a call center employee was arrested in eastern India for allegedly using the credit cards details of US customers to make online purchases.
Last June, police in Bangalore, India's technology hub, arrested an HSBC data processing center employee on charges he siphoned off 233,000 stg from 20 accounts belonging to the bank's British customers.
To ease worries of firms about information safety, the outsourcing industry is setting up an independent Self Regulatory Organization to enforce privacy and data protection standards that will start operations in three to six months, Karnik said.
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