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Posts Tagged ‘Barclays’

Firstsource bags $100 mn outsourcing deal from Barclays

October 1st, 2010

BPO firm Firstsource Solutions today said it has bagged a five-year outsourcing contract, worth up to $100 million from the UK-based banking major Barclay Plc’s unit Barclayscard.

Firstsource has signed a five-year outsourcing partnership agreement and the deal size is between $80-100 million, said a company official.

The deal involves management of Barclay card’s credit card and consumer lending business, read the company press release.

“Firstsource have given us a commitment to establish a long-term presence here in Teesside and, with their global footprint, they are also well placed to meet the current and future needs of our growing international customer base,” Barclaycard Global Sales and Service Director Derek Allgood said

Firstsource will manage the majority of the services currently provided by the Teesside centre as well as related payment servicing team located in Wavertree, Merseyside, the company said in a statement.

“We are delighted to have won this contract from Barclaycard with reinforces the relationship we already have with Barclaycard in the US and is an acknowledgement of Firstsource’s expertise in the financial services sector and in particular for credit card services,” Firstsource CEO & MD Matthew Vallance said.

The partnership is part of Barclaycard’s ongoing programme of improving business efficiency and providing a quality service to customers.

In February 2008, Firstsource signed a five-year outsourcing agreement with Barclays US credit card business. Under the term of agreement, Firstsource is managing and operating Barclay’s operations centre in Colorado Springs, CO, which includes providing customer care and collection’s support to Barclays US cardholders.

Firstsource earns 24 per cent of its global revenues from the financial services sector, providing an extensive range of back-office, customer management and collections services.

Barclaycard, part of Barclays Global Retail Banking division, is a leading global payment business, which helps consumers, retailers and businesses to make and accept payments flexibly, and to access short-term credit when needed.

Source:-http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/firstsource-bags-100-mn-outsourcing-dealbarclays/110680/on

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Barclays Brings its IT Home

January 20th, 2010

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As the market for large scale IT outsourcing arrangements weakens due to the recession, Barclays has decided not to renew its deal with Accenture when it expires in June.

The $640 million contract, first signed in 2004, jobbed out application development and management of Barclay’s UK commercial and retail banking system. Barclays wanted to improve staff flexibility and lower costs of developing and maintaining software. While the bank hasn’t publicly said much about why it’s bringing IT back in house, the bank said it recently completed a standard process review before deciding not to extend Accenture’s deal.

After years of unfettered growth, the bad economy has taken its toll on IT outsourcing. Accenture, for example, recently said outsourcing demand is decreasing, and bookings were lower than expected—even though the number of actual signings is increasing, suggesting smaller and more narrowly focused terms for deals. Outsourcing and offshoring analysts have predicted a change in outsourcing toward initiative-specific and project management-type tasks, as the large labor-intensive IT outsourcing deals of the 1990s and 2000s start to loose their fiscal utility.

In statements, Barclays said the bank would continue to “engage with” Accenture to achieve its operational efficiency goals, while Accenture said it would continue to provide consulting and solutions services to Barclays.

Source:http://www.americanbanker.com/bulletins/-1006141-1.html

As the market for large scale IT outsourcing arrangements weakens due to the recession, Barclays has decided not to renew its deal with Accenture when it expires in June.

The $640 million contract, first signed in 2004, jobbed out application development and management of Barclay’s UK commercial and retail banking system. Barclays wanted to improve staff flexibility and lower costs of developing and maintaining software. While the bank hasn’t publicly said much about why it’s bringing IT back in house, the bank said it recently completed a standard process review before deciding not to extend Accenture’s deal.

After years of unfettered growth, the bad economy has taken its toll on IT outsourcing. Accenture, for example, recently said outsourcing demand is decreasing, and bookings were lower than expected—even though the number of actual signings is increasing, suggesting smaller and more narrowly focused terms for deals. Outsourcing and offshoring analysts have predicted a change in outsourcing toward initiative-specific and project management-type tasks, as the large labor-intensive IT outsourcing deals of the 1990s and 2000s start to loose their fiscal utility.

In statements, Barclays said the bank would continue to “engage with” Accenture to achieve its operational efficiency goals, while Accenture said it would continue to provide consulting and solutions services to Barclays.

Source:http://www.americanbanker.com/bulletins/-1006141-1.html

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Barclays drops £400m Accenture deal

January 13th, 2010

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Barclays will not renew a £400 million, six-year application development deal with supplier Accenture.

The bank said the decision had been made for “commercial reasons” but declined to explain further. The move follows a decision to move desktop PC management back in-house, ending a deal with Getronics.

Accenture said it will continue to act as a “consulting and solutions services” supplier to Barclays, but also refused to give details of this work.

Two hundred and thirty staff will move from Accenture to Barclays, after the contract expires on 30 June. This number is far smaller than the 900 Barclays staff who moved from the bank to the supplier during the year after the deal was signed in mid-2004.

The six year deal also covered management of its commercial and retail banking systems, but excluded investment banking and asset management operations at Barclays Capital and Barclays Global Investors.

Barclays said that moving application development in-house would give it the “most efficient model” for the work. But at the time the deal was signed, it highlighted outsourcing as a better route to more flexibility and lower costs.

The decision not to renew the deal had been “mutually agreed” by the bank and the supplier, Accenture said.

Meanwhile, Barclays’ systems have been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons, after an unexplained system crash in October knocked offline its cash machines, in-branch banking systems and internet banking for a number of hours. The problem followed other high-profile online banking crashes in prior months.

The bank is extensively cutting its IT workforce as it attempts to reduce costs. Last May, it emerged that the bank would cut 700 IT staff by the end of the year, reportedly offshoring work to Singapore, Hungary and India.

Source:http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/it-business/supplier-relations/news/index.cfm?newsid=18267

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Unisys UK Joint Venture iPSL Renews Outsourcing Contracts with Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds TSB

October 28th, 2009

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Unisys Corporation (NYSE:UIS) today announced that its UK joint venture subsidiary Intelligent Processing Solutions Limited (iPSL) has signed five-year outsourcing contract extensions with Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC. The
aggregate value of the contract extensions is estimated to be more than £UK315 million ($US500 million).

Established in 2000, iPSL provides outsourced cheque and credit clearing services for major banks in the UK. Lloyds TSB, Barclays and HSBC are all shareholders in the joint venture, along with majority shareholder Unisys.

iPSL provides large-scale, secure outsourcing services across the UK banking sector, including all aspects of cheque processing, image archive and retrieval, “lock-box” services, reconciliation and other related back-office functions.

Royston Hoggarth, chairman of iPSL, said, “By using a centralised, shared-services model that delivers significant economies of scale, iPSL enables our client banks to process payments with greater cost-efficiency than they
could achieve individually. iPSL’s combination of secure infrastructure and banking processes positions it well in coming years to help client banks in other closely related markets such as Account Servicing, including Imaging and
Archiving and Regulatory Support.”

Rob Chapman, vice president and managing director, UK, Middle East and Africa, Unisys, added: “iPSL plays an important role in today`s UK economy. By providing
a fully integrated, end-to-end service, it frees banks to focus on developing and delivering more financial products and banking services that provide better overall value to their customers.”