Lloyds TSB will cease customer calls to Mumbai hub

Lloyds TSB Group Plc, the biggest provider of UK consumer loans, will stop directing customers' calls to India and instead handle client enquiries from Britain, following an investment in phone technology.

About 600 people who had handled phone calls at an administration site in Mumbai last year will have been redeployed to other duties by the end of this month, said spokeswoman Mary Walsh today. The company may continue to shift additional non-customer-facing work to Mumbai, where the London-based bank employs 2,800 people, said Walsh.

"Last summer, we introduced an automated answering service designed to handle customers' straightforward enquiries electronically,'' said Managing Director of Lloyds TSB telephone banking Sally Jones-Evans in a statement.

"As a result the number of calls being handled by staff in our call centres has reduced.''

Lloyds TSB trimmed costs last year, aided by the elimination of about 4,000 jobs, as it posted second-half revenue growth slower than peers such as Barclays Plc Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc doesn't use overseas call centres to service its banking operations to ensure customer queries are addressed without delay, Chief Executive Fred Goodwin said yesterday.

The Mumbai call centre opened in 2004 when the bank closed a site in Newcastle, England with the loss of 968 jobs, the Lloyds TSB Group Union said today in a statement.

The Mumbai call centre has been a disaster for the bank,'' because of "customer dissatisfaction,'' said the union in the statement. The union said the bank's decision was a "policy reversal.''

Lloyds TSB also said all UK customers will have direct access to local branches in the UK from April.