WNS wins mega 8 year $1b BPO contract with Aviva

You might not have heard too much of WNS. It’s a US quoted, ex-British Airways BPO spinoff. You might also not heard that yesterday it pulled off one of the biggest UK and Ireland BPO contracts awarded in a long while. It secured an 8 year, $1b BPO contract with UK insurance company Aviva and its Irish subsidiary, Hibernian . In the process WNS acquired Aviva Global Services, Aviva’s offshore BPO company, for £115m to be financed by a new $200m debt facility. WNS (which already provides some BPO facilities to Aviva) gets 5800 seats in Bangalore, India and Colombo, Sri Lanka as well as operations in Pune and Chennai.

This new contract will put WNS at a $500m annual revenue run rate with c$60m net revenue (as ever, excluding all the bad stuff) by Q1 2010 when the contract comes fully on stream.

In the UK BPO world, this ranks as a really big mega deal. It really does show that, even in (or is that because of?) times of economic downturn, the BPO players can do well.