How To Combat Fraud In India

For the past several years, outsourcing has become big business to those companies looking to save money. Several countries, including the United States and Britain, tapped India to hire local people for their credit card companies. They hired locals to answer phones in their customer service department. These were supposed to be wise money moves, saving them millions of dollars. These millions of dollars would have been spent on training U.S. workers at a higher rate.

Up until recently, the companies that outsourced thought that sending the jobs overseas would work out great for people who needed work in India. However, it has been brought to light that some of those same people are taking advantage of the system. Some of the people that work at those call centres in India are trying to make the system work for them, in the wrong way. Some of the employees at the call centres in India have been accused of conspiring with organised gangs. The organised gangs wanted the reps to provide access to U.K. credit card accounts. In return, the call centre employees were promised a year's worth of wages.

This hit several banks pretty hard, including some major ones in the United States. Because of this, at least one in the U.S. has severed their ties with the Indian call centres. There was another incident that involved another U.S. based bank. One of the incidents involved employees from a call centre in India. They reportedly defrauded customers in the U.S. of about one million Rupees (India's local currency), which in American currency, would be about $23,000. The police were able to catch and round up plenty of people who were caught red handed. In fact, one was so bold as to have stashed some of the funds at his home. Eventually, he did get caught.

How did they do it? Well, working at the call centre, they came into contact with U.S. customers that called their call centre in India for assistance. They got friendly with the customers and were able to earn their trust. While doing that, the call centre employees were able to get them to provide their PIN numbers and other accounts they may have had with this financial institution. Once they got what they needed, they took the money out of their accounts and transferred the money into their own accounts. Being overseas, they thought it would be easy to just transfer the funds without anyone questioning them. They were able to get away with it for while, but when the customers found out, they notified the bank and the bank contacted the local police. The police did a roundup and arrested a heap of people.

India's legal system is not the greatest. Their rate of ten percent for sentencing criminal offenders is low. The backlog of the offender's case could take years to clear up. Another thing is the presence of a reputable judge. In India, they are scarce. You may end up having a gangster or mobster to assist. The legal cases take a long time to process.

In India, they have several security issues. At the call centres, there is too much turnover, at least 50 to 100 percent. The process for employee screening is poor. Many managers experience turnover, within themselves, also. The employees try to get funds from offshore outsourcing. This action can filter from person to person.

Other countries, such as the U.S., have to do their part to prevent these types of fraud and scams from occurring. Some of the banks and credit card companies there are not efficient in assisting their customers with their fraud concerns. That's not good. These companies need to step it up a notch or two so that they can keep the customers they have and continue to get more. Some of them seem to disconnect from their customers and don't have a sense of what's going on with them.

On the other hand, if India doesn't get vigilant with their employees, they're liable to lose more business, something they really can't afford Another card fraud incident involved a credit card scam where some call centre numbers use the bank's customers and increased some of their credit limits without authorization from the person themselves. When the U.S. bank found out, they severed ties with India's call centre.

Even with this, Britain says that they keep an eye on their outsourcing, which includes fraudulent activity. One of their insurance groups says it complies with the outsourcing rules. This group tightly oversees the Indian workers. They also are in agreement with the protecting of data. HSBC staff is used in India and they aren't in the business for a third party-network.

There are other countries, such as France and Asia, which are combating the same issues. This is going on as there is an increased presence of more call centre jobs and other positions shifting outside of the U.S. for outsourcing and cheap labour. However, this trend may change and get companies to use smaller facilities that are professional and know what they're doing. This trend can trigger alternate outsourcing locations within India (this depends on whether or not people will trust again). Eventually, another door can be opened and more opportunities abound. The most important thing about this is it adds value with corporate cultures and work ethics. Corporate groups can place greater emphasis on learning about rewards after a job is well done.

There is a law in the U.K. called the Data Protection Act. This law specifies that companies keep their computer servers within EU limits. Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone because some of their data is being handled far away beyond the limits specified. Because of this, it has been mentioned that off-shoring may not too far in the distant future. Then they'll really have problems because of skipping out of paying taxes. This could ruin the fabric of the financial industry in Britain and have very damaging effects.

Despite the concerns, the British companies that still use India for outsourcing claim that they have rigorous standards in place to combat and stop fraud. They are confident that they will be able to set a new trend with what they have in place.