Deutsche goes contrarian, to expand captives

Even as talks of multinational captives closing operations in India are making the rounds, Deutsche Bank is planning to expand its captive operations.

DB Operations International (DBOI), the global processing arm of the Deutsche Group, plans to ramp up its headcount in India to 5,000 by 2008 end from 3,900 (as of end of December 2007).

The bank is also coming up with its third centre in Jaipur, at the Mahindra World City. The other centres are located in Mumbai and Bangalore.

"The growth plans for Jaipur are significant and we intend to commence recruitment in 2008. The Jaipur plans include realignment of some work from Mumbai and Bangalore and fits within our overall offshoring strategy for DBOI," said Simon Fanning, strategic sourcing programme director, Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank has multiple technology and operations centres world-wide supporting their major trading locations and businesses.

To further simplify the structure and take advantage of globalising its time zones, Deutsche Bank has created an integrated network of processing hubs across major cities around the world.

While analysts and experts have maintained that captives are expensive to run, Fanning feels otherwise.

"We never treated our captive operations as back office processes but always operated in a manner any other third-party player would do. So in that sense DBOI continues to be the backbone of Deutsche Bank's operational strategy with its strong focus on capacity and process re-engineering,"he said.

"We constantly benchmark ourself on cost and service terms with those available in the local markets wherever it operates," he added.