blog It’s been a tumultuous few years for the IT department at insurance giant QBE. In July 2011 the company made a number of staff in its IT department redundant (the AFR reported up to 200 jobs would go at the time), and that same year it got a new chief information officer, Mike Emmett. By January this year, however, Emmett was in a different role, replaced by former IAG executive Tony Forward. And it looks as though Forward has wasted no time in cutting costs. According to a Finance Sector Union media release in April (first reported by iTNews):
“Information Technology workers are the latest casualties in QBE’s war on Australian workers, with 100 IT jobs to be scrapped as part of the insurer’s aggressive offshoring agenda. QBE has announced that over 100 jobs currently performed in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia will now be done by workers based in India.
This latest announcement follows revelations earlier this year that QBE are offshoring 700 insurance jobs- including claims lodgement, management and reinsurance administration- to the Philippines. Australian IT staff have been advised of the intention by QBE to offshore these roles, and FSU is assisting members impacted by this decision to understand their rights and entitlements.”
Personally, I wouldn’t want to be working at QBE right now. If you are, I suggest that you either make sure you’re in a critical role, with unreplaceable skills, or start polishing your resume. Because it seems like the company’s IT department has been in “restructuring” phase for some time and is likely to remain that way in the mid-term. Not precisely the best situation in terms of job stability ;) And it’s never nice, as countless Australian financial services IT staff have found over the past half-decade, to be ordered to train your replacement in India ;)
Image credit: Saleem Taqvi, royalty free
They probably had to offshore. A recent quote I got from them was well over other insurer quotes. Then again, these other insurers may well have already offshored large parts of there businesses to lower costs.
Yes, absolutely! Their ever increasing profits and revenue forced them to do this!
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/skyrocketing-insurance-premiums-hit-queensland-flood-victims-and-others/story-e6freoof-1226548519016
In case you missed it my first line was dripping with sarcasm. Insurance is one of the industries that gets money giving to them directly from the public by legislative mechanics*. There should be a matching requirement for them to treat the public just as well but, as is always the case, the market only ever seems to work to the profit of corporations.
* there are an increasing number of laws mandating that individuals and companies must use products from the insurance industry, there are no requirements in the reverse for pricing.
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