INDIA’s biggest outsourcing firm, which delivers back-office services for the NHS and British Airways in offices from Bangalore to Delhi, is coming to Peterborough.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the Bombay-listed company, has agreed a deal with Pearl Assurance that will catapult it into the market for providing back-office services from Britain.

TCS will take on 950 Pearl workers to provide business processing services to Pearl’s closed funds portfolio.

Phiroz Vandrevala, an executive vice-president at TCS, said that the move would form the cornerstone of the company’s efforts to build a larger back-office business, servicing other life and pensions companies from the UK.

Already it counts a number of British financial services companies among its customers, including Aviva, the insurer, Barclays, the bank, and Experian, the credit-scoring agency.

TCS has a technology development office in Guildford, Surrey, but this will be the first time that it has opened an office in the UK to do administrative work that traditionally it has carried out in low-cost locations.

The company has expanded outside India to establish bases in other low-cost countries such as China and Brazil. It also has operations in so-called “near shore” locations, such as Hungary, so that it can be closer to its customer.

The move into Peterborough, in Northamptonshire, will allow TCS to offer customers the opportunity to outsource different tasks to different locations.

LogicaCMG and Xansa, the London-listed IT groups, have developed a similar offering, with service centres in both the UK and India.

Edward Churchill, a member of the Pearl Group Steering Committee, said that the deal would be good for the company and for its employees.

As a closed life fund, the company will, over time, see the number of policyholders fall as policies mature. Mr Churchill said that the deal would safeguard Pearl against an increase in the average cost of administering each policy.

He said that the move would also provide existing Pearl employees with a firmer career path, as TCS’s plans to expand in the UK would provide new opportunities.

The contract is expected to generate revenues of £480 million for TCS over 12 years.

Pearl was one of three closed life funds bought in January by Hugh Osmond, the entrepreneur, and his venture capital backers, for £1 billion from HHG, the fund manager.

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