KENT Reliance Building Society is to shed around 30 jobs after stepping up its use of Indian workers.

The fast-growing society is to launch new products with help from specialist processing and call centre staff in Bangalore.

It claims that costs in India are a quarter of what they would be in Kent and the new products would not be introduced if it had to use Kentish workers.

The number of staff based at Sun Pier, Chatham, will fall to around 45 over the next few months.

Speaking in Bangalore, Mike Lazenby, chief executive, said there would be no more than 10 compulsory redundancies and most of the cuts would affect temporary workers.

He claimed staff numbers would be about the same as they were when the society moved from three offices in Manor Road to Sun Pier and before its period of phenomenal growth.

Kent Reliance claims to be the fastest-growing society in Britain with assets of around a billion pounds.

Mr Lazenby said he had no regrets about his strategy to outsource processing - and some voice work - to a specialist firm, ProcessMind, in Bangalore.

He said that many of the processes in the so-called Ambassador Project would be involved in new products.

A postal account, with what Mr Lazenby calls "table-topping" interest rates, will be unveiled later in the year, as well as an account for children. Processing for both will be done in Bangalore.

He said: "We would not be offering a postal account if we had to do the processing in the UK. With the costs associated with doing it in Kent, it wouldn't be viable."

Voice work will also be done in Bangalore, with half a dozen Indian workers answering inquiries about an account that will be promoted nationally.

Leanne Macey, business development manager, and Catherine Utting, compliance manager, have been in Bangalore to recruit staff with the right accent and telephone manner from dozens of applicants.

Mr Lazenby said: "If we can find innovative ways of doing what we do better at less cost, then we will. The UK financial services market is highly competitive, over-supplied where the typical margin is 1.2 per cent and dropping rapidly.

"The cost of regulation is going up and the cost of getting it wrong is becoming a burden that many societies will not be able to sustain."

He accepted doing business in India was an "emotional" subject, but the benefits were enormous.

"ProcessMind has really helped our business. The quality of service we get is far above and beyond what we would hope to get elsewhere.

“Costs are a quarter of what they would be in Kent. We need to make those sorts of cost reductions if we are going to be able to trade in a really competitive market so that we can offer the kind of interest rates that people want to have.”