India-based IT firm to set up shop in Transamerica’s LR offices

Mumbai, India-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) announced Tuesday (May 15) it will nearly double its Arkansas employee headcount with the recent hiring of more than 200 employees at new offices in west Little Rock.

The job announcement by TCS is part of the Mumbai IT firm’s agreement with Transamerica Corp. in January to transform the administration of Transamerica’s insurance and annuity business lines in the U.S. At the time, Transamerica said it planned to accelerate efforts to outsource its digital capabilities and modernize all technology platforms to better serve all the company’s varied customer-facing businesses.

“TCS is thrilled to welcome more than 200 additional Arkansans to our workforce as we continue to invest in local talent and U.S. facilities, helping American companies like Transamerica digitally transform and adapt to rapidly evolving customer demands,” said Suresh Muthuswami, president of TCS’ global banking, financial services and insurance platforms.

Transamerica President and CEO Mark Mullins said in early January that the IT outsourcing deal supports the company’s customer-centric reorganization strategy and focus on sustainable growth.

“Transamerica continues to put our customers at the forefront of everything we do. I’m very excited to embark on this partnership with TCS, whose transformation and technology innovation capabilities will supplement our focus on improving our customers’ experience in a digitally enabled way,” said Mullins. “This supports meaningful growth in all business lines – including insurance and annuities – and advances our competitive positioning. TCS was carefully selected because of its significant, ongoing investments in technology and its expertise in the insurance and annuity industry.”

TRANSAMERICA REORG TO PRODUCE $100 MILLION IN SAVINGS OVER 3 YEARS
Under the reorganization, company officials said all Transamerica employees currently supporting the business lines involved in the reorganization will be offered positions by TCS. According to company officials, the 2,200 “transferring employees” will be also be given the opportunity to remain in the same U.S. cities where they now work.

The multi-year partnership, which shifts more than $2 billion in revenues and 2,200 current Transamerica employees to TCS’s payroll, is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2018. Transamerica said the deal is also expected to cut the company’s annual expenses in the U.S. by $70 million and provide annual savings of $100 million over the next three years that will post as transition and conversion charges on half-year financials.

Mumbai-based TCS will occupy several floors of the 1400 Centerview building in west Little Rock as part of a multi-year pact signed in early 2018. The local offices will have digital capabilities to service 10 million insurance policies on an integrated modern IT platform, officials said.

Today, there are more than 200 former Transamerica employees already working for TCS at the west Little Rock offices, adding to its existing office in Bentonville that employs more than 150 workers. What is not known is how many of the new employees at TCS’s new Little Rock offices were transferred from other Transamerica locations in Arkansas, including the company’s Employee Benefits (TEB) division at the same location at 1400 Centerview.

At the end of 2016, officials at Transamerica’s U.S. headquarters in Baltimore announced the insurance and retirement services giant was cutting some 800 jobs across the U.S. as part of a companywide cost-cutting and reorganization program. That downsizing included 20 positions in Little Rock at TEB’s Centerview offices, which formerly operated under the name Transamerica Worksite Marketing.

At the end of 2016, there were more than 430 TEB employees at the Centerview offices selling the company’s voluntary life and supplemental health insurance products to employers at the workplace. Transamerica spokeswoman Julie Quinlan in Baltimore did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment for this story regarding TEB’s current headcount. TCS representative Ben Trounson also did not respond to inquiries from Talk Business & Politics.

Transamerica’s corporate headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland, with other major operations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Transamerica is part of the publicly traded Aegon group of companies, The Hague, Netherlands-based financial services giant. Aegon is one of the world’s largest providers of life insurance, pension solutions and asset management products, operating in over 25 global markets with some 28,000 employees. In 2017, Aegon reported consolidated annual revenues of more than $53.8 billion, including $14.7 billion from its U.S. operations.

Although based in India, TCS said it has invested nearly $3 billion in the U.S. over the past three years and has been among the top two IT services job creators in the U.S. The Mumbai company trades on the National Stock Exchange of India and had annual revenue of nearly $17.6 billion in fiscal 2017.