Freeman in Calcutta on Thursday. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta, Aug. 28: ANZ India is set to transfer 400 back office jobs from Australia and New Zealand to India in the next eight to 10 months. Later on, it plans to shift similar jobs from Asian countries as well.

The move comes at a time when ANZ is awaiting Reserve Bank’s permission to start banking here. It exited local banking when Grindlays was sold to Standard Chartered in 2000.

“In the next eight to 10 months, we expect about 400 additional jobs in back office operations to be transferred to India,” ANZ India managing director Shane Freeman said here today.

“We have moved up the chain and are doing value work here. It is no longer about cost arbitrage as far as India is concerned,” he said while speaking at an IT symposium organised by Nasscom and the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

At present, ANZ India operates out of Bangalore, which earlier used to be a software development centre, and does back office work and shared services such as job evaluation and payroll management. The centre employs 2600.

ANZ operates in wholesale and retail banking through partnerships in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Laos.

“We expect growth in our Bangalore operations to come from back office work in Asian countries. However, it is too early to define from where and how much,” Freeman said.

He, however, said its Australian unit would not do voice outsourcing from India as Australian customers prefer to speak to their own countrymen.

ANZ has two campuses in Bangalore. Each campus has a capacity to accommodate 2,000 employees.

Freeman said ANZ hoped to reach full capacity on both the campuses in the next few years.