MORE than 150 roles at a Bradford city centre company are being outsourced in a move that will see jobs transferred to a firm based in South Africa.

In an announcement to employees yesterday (Tuesday), Vanquis Banking Group, former Provident Financial, on Godwin Street, Bradford, is transferring around 180 jobs to its operational strategic partners Teleperformance and Sigma.

The move has been heavily criticised, with scores of long-serving Bradford workers now facing uncertainty.

A Vanquis Banking Group spokesperson said: “Vanquis Banking Group has started consultation with some operational employees about a potential TUPE transfer of roles to Teleperformance and Sigma, who are our operational strategic partners.

“If the proposed transfer goes ahead, operations will be based in the UK and South Africa as is the case now, with the majority of roles in the UK.

“The proposed changes will improve customer outcomes and enable us to create a UK operations centre of excellence.”

The roles are understood to be jobs in the Bradford customer service department, which according to the Equality for Workers Union (EFUW) employs 344 customer service representatives there.

The Vanquis spokesperson, however, said: “In Bradford, roles impacted by the proposed TUPE transfer is circa 180.”

He also said the consultation is for a TUPE transfer of roles, not redundancy.

An employee contacted the T&A to explain their concerns over the move.

“This has left hundreds of staff in the blue,” the staff member said.

“Relocating to South Africa to save costs is absolutely ridiculous.

“It’s a rash decision when the company is making profits after profits.

“They have decided to do this which is leaving staff in hard times.”

The employee said they would be able to work from home but added that many staff members did not want to work for the South Africa-based firms.

Mizan Muqit, General Secretary and Co-Founder of the EFWU, said: “These jobs are being outsourced to South Africa.

“We have many EFUW members at the site and have been dealing with them for many years. We were inundated yesterday with members calling and all were worried. It’s a disgrace these jobs are being outsourced and Bradfordians impacted.

“It is all to do with cost per head and Vanquis Bank profit margins. Our members are treated like a number on a spreadsheet.

“As a union, we will do our best to protect our members and accompany them to all of their individual consultation meetings in due course.”

In a letter shared by an employee explaining the transfer, Ian Fielder, Director of Operations at Vanquis Bank, wrote: “Today we have announced some important proposed changes to the way we are going to serve our customers and structure ourselves within the Chief Operations Function. These proposed changes will impact a number of colleagues across the team.

“We have enjoyed a very strong relationship with our outsource partner Sigma, based in Cape Town, South Africa, for the past 12 years. More recently, we have started working with a second outsource partner, Teleperformance, also in Cape Town, South Africa.

“Since the pandemic, we have become more and more reliant on these key strategic partners to support the needs of our customers, against a backdrop of a difficult UK employment market where it has become harder and harder to recruit sufficient volumes of the right quality of colleagues in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

“As a result, after careful consideration, we have today reached an inflection point where we are proposing to move a number of specific operational processes, and the colleagues carrying out these processes, by way of a TUPE transfer to our strategic partners Sigma and Teleperformance.

“Both Teleperformance and Sigma have notified us they propose to conduct the work being transferred from VBG from their South Africa offices.

“We are working with Teleperformance and Sigma to explore alternative career opportunities with them for transferred colleagues. These roles would be in the UK, working at home for other clients and not VBG.”

The three proposed 2023 dates of transfer are August 1, September 1 or November 1.

The company was established in Bradford in 1880 by Joshua Kelley Waddilove to provide affordable credit to families in West Yorkshire as the Provident Cloth and Supply Company.

In December 2021, Provident Financial’s doorstep lending business was placed into a managed orderly run-off and that part of the business closed.

In January 2023, it was announced that the company would be rebranded from Provident Financial to Vanquis Banking Group.

It changed its name accordingly on March 2, 2023.