Suncorp has announced plans to offshore another 65 jobs to India, this time from its accountancy, close and reporting functions.

Around two-thirds of the jobs affected are based in Brisbane, with the remainder in Sydney.

A Suncorp spokesman says that it hopes to redeploy as many of the affected staff as possible so that the “net number of roles impacted will likely be around 40”.

The latest announcement brings the total number of jobs offshored by the insurer to 203 in the past six months, as part of its “Simplification” cost-cutting project.

In addition to the latest 65 roles, Suncorp has offshored 71 roles in personal insurance, 50 in claims and 17 business services positions.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) says the latest announcement backs its claim that the offshoring project at Suncorp is gathering pace.

“Suncorp executives should hang their heads in shame,” FSU National Secretary Leon Carter said.

“How dare they desert the very community they profit from, by ripping jobs out of the community and abandoning finance workers and the customers they serve.”

The news follows Indian media reports last week that Suncorp has struck a deal with two business process outsourcing firms in India to outsource 2000 jobs over five years.

Suncorp has described the figures as “speculative” and says there is no agreement in place regarding the future value of its outsourcing project or the number of jobs involved.

But offshoring IT roles is not on the agenda for Suncorp, with Suncorp Business Services CEO Jeff Smith telling a conference in Sydney recently that the IT function is “too important” to the company to outsource. 

“We want our engineers and IT people generating ideas and also to have the vehicle for implementing those ideas,” he said. “You can’t do that if you offshore all of that.”

A Suncorp spokesman says Mr Smith’s comments were in relation to its online, customer-facing, new technology teams only.