Saturday, June 25 2005 19:30 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: Amidst concern over the reported leakage of financial information by an Indian call centre, Britain's financial regulator today (Jun 25, 2005) said BPO's in India were "safe" with a "very good" security system.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) said its research had found "security in Indian call centres very good and in some cases more controlled than in this country."

The FSA also did not concur with the Lloyds TSB Group Union, which represents 45,000 of the bank's staff, that India did not meet the same rigorous standards of data security as European countries.

The big banks here have been swift to assure customers that they are safe.

HSBC said, "The security measures it uses in India are identical to those used in the UK."

"Call centre operators can only access data to answer a specific customer inquiry, no members of staff have access to a customer's full Pin or code words, and the software is specially designed to prevent data downloads," it said.