January 5, 2004

By Lynda Loxton

Cape Town - The Budget Group of Companies, one of Britain's leading insurance intermediaries, and Wesgro, the Western Cape development organisation, have announced that Budget will invest R100 million over three years in a 200-seat contact centre in Cape Town.

It will be up and running by June. It will help expand Budget's activities in Britain, where it plans to double its customer base to 1.6 million by 2006, but will not lead to job losses. It will operate in real time and be fully integrated with British contact centres.

A unique technology solution will be implemented, devised and tested by Telkom specifically for Budget.

Peter Winslow, the group chief executive of Budget, said Cape Town had been chosen after his group had considered several locations. The choice was based on the skills available, including the service attitude, accents and employees' willingness to learn. 

The Budget Group already had an affiliated company in South Africa, Budget Insurance Brokers, but a new contact centre had been registered in South Africa under the name of Fusion Outsourcing Services, he said.

Budget had worked with a variety of local firms - including Emmanuels Staffing Services, Lurie and Associates and Spescom Datafusion, as well as Telkom - to bring the project to fruition.

The Budget Group of Companies has 800 000 customers in Britain and employs about 1 900 people there.