BPOs keep a close watch on their employees. — FILE PHOTO

CHENNAI: This is one process BPOs will not want to outsource — verifying the antecedents of their employees.

The Business Process Outsourcing industry in Chennai is more than aware of the relevance of the verification process after the recent detection and arrest of an HSBC employee on charges of making fraudulent transactions from the company's Bangalore centre.

Consequently, funds and data of over a dozen clients in the United Kingdom were compromised.

While some companies did not want to talk about "security" as a policy matter, others discussed the detailed checks and balances already in place.

Three levels

The vice-president of a leading BPO here says the "detailed verification process" happens at three levels. "We have huge investment bankers for clients. So our verification [of candidates to be employed] starts with school records."

It ensures that an applicant has no criminal background, especially a history of financial malpractice. The final stage is character assessment.

Discreet enquiries

"It will take at least four or seven weeks for a candidate to get into the production environment," after the company completes `discreet' enquiries with friends, family and neighbours.

Most companies have "tight security" arrangements, including closed-circuit cameras, firewalls and ban on camera cell phones, to keep track of the employees' activities in the office.

Supervisory layers

Mohan Sekhar, chief delivery officer, iGATE Global Solutions, says, "We have always had several supervisory layers to keep track of employees' work." These include constant audits and checks to ensure confidentiality.

"We encrypt client's sensitive data so that they are useless to a third party."

According to him, the clients are confident of the company's security processes. Besides, fraud is not unique to India.

Industry insiders agree that the incident has scared some clients. "There is a risk and we are taking all efforts to minimise it," a BPO head notes.

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