When Axa Insurance decided to move back-office jobs this year from its motor claims department in Birmingham to Bangalore it knew it had to tread carefully.
It had seen the union and media backlash faced by rivals such as Aviva and Lloyds TSB last year when announcing they were moving thousands of back-office jobs to India. So it struck a deal in December with the Amicus union promising to move jobs offshore only after extensive consultation with the union, a minimum of forced redundancies, and extensive staff retraining and redeployment.
