Indian BPO is safer than UK's: Brit firms

Twenty-four hours after a British tabloid sting apparently clouded prospects for India's sunshine BPO industry, the UK's leading data protection experts and lawyers masterminding data transfer contracts between British companies and Indian call centres have stepped in to the row and defended India.

Tim Pullan an IT & Outsourcing partner at London law firm Lawrence Graham LLP told TOI on Friday that his clients, who signed some of the biggest outsourcing contracts with India over the last two years, were eminently satisfied with the security standards in place in call centres across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and elsewhere in India.

Though Pullan would not name names, his law firm's clients are understood to be some of the biggest British banks and telecommunications companies to set the outsourcing trend going with India. Pullan admitted his firm had overseen seven of the biggest deals in the last 24 months.

Pullan said at the time his clients were finalising rigorous data transfer contractual terms with Indian call centres, the Indian companies had been willing and able to prove they compied with ISO1799, which are internationally recognised security standards, and BS7799, the British equivalent of the ISO.

He said, in stringent and possibly unexpected defence of India's furiously-growing call centre industry, that data security standards were actually more rigorous in India than in British call centres.

"We've found the Indians more focussed on such issues," Pullan pointed out, adding that Britain's leading government regulatory body, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) had recently issued a similar report giving the thumbs-up to Indian call centre security standards. Leading British lawyers said, sotto-voce that The Sun tabloid's sting operation and reporting of an Indian call centre worker's crookedness smacked of "racist overtones".

Pullan agreed that "The Indian outsourcing industry is an easy target because of popular fears about the transfer of jobs overseas."

But carping critics said the defence of India's call centres did not tally with their recollection of the FSA's May report, which was written after its inspectors toured Indian call centres and assessed security standards.

Financial experts said the FSA report, as they recalled it, had warned that overseas calls centres posed "a material risk" to its goals of cutting financial crime, protecting consumers and retaining confidence in Britain's financial markets.

But Pullan insisted the FSA gave a clean chit to India. He added that Indian call centres were, in any case, under tremendous pressure to comply with strict data protection rules commonly observed within the UK and the European Union. The Indians, he said, agreed to sign up to "highly enforceable" contractual terms.

These included the right for a British client to take "immediate action" such as "switching off" the outsourced job without a time lag. He said the legal action signed up to by Indian call centres, put them legally and financially at huge risk if they failed to comply with stringent security standards.

"The financial consequences for the Indians could be costly, they are unlimited and without a financial cap," he said.

Pullan added that most Indian call centres "potentially huge liabilities under data transfer contracts which are set up between banks and the outsourcing companies.

"These companies have a lot more to lose than their reputation, as reflected through their tight security measures." In an attempt to calm some of the hysteria over the alleged sale to a British reporter of 1,000 British customers' financial details, Pullan pointed out that "Corruption is a risk inherent in the financial services business, but rotten eggs are no more likely in India than they are here."

He insisted that "when it comes to security and rigorous data protection compliance controls, in our experience the Indian call centres are often streaks ahead of their UK counterparts."