The UK-based NatWest Group plans to hire around 5,000 engineers globally in the next three years, of which about 3,000 will be for its Global Capability Centre (GCC) in India, according to the group’s Chief Information Officer, Scott Marcar.
The hiring will be in ‘high end’ engineering areas like Java, Python, Data Engineering, Artificial Intelligence skill and analytics, he told newspersons.
‘Easy access’
Nearly 50 per cent of NatWest group’s technology is in India; as well as well as 40 per cent of finance and 80 per cent market operations. “India is very critical for the group’s operations globally. The GCC in India drives innovation and digital transformation to enable customers to have easy access to banking services,” he said.
The GCC in India is in three locations — Gurugaon, Chennai and Bengaluru — with Bengaluru being the latest. Globally the group’s digital group has around 22,000 employees of which 50 per cent are in India, according to Punit Sood, Head of International Hubs, NatWest Group, which is UK’s largest business and commercial bank.
Sood said going forward, the plan is to evenly divide the presence of employees in all the three locations. Chennai’s biggest advantage is the presence of the large number of engineering colleges, he said.
High attrition
On attrition, Sood said it is around 13.8 per cent. In 2022, the attrition was high due to the ‘great’ resignation that affected the entire IT industry. In the operations’ side, nearly 50 per cent of the attrition is among employees with less than four years of experience with many of them leaving to pursue higher education. In the technology side, the attrition is more among employees with above five years of experience, he said.
In July 2020, the name of Royal Bank of Scotland Group was changed to its parent company NatWest Group. In India, the name was changed accordingly, but the legal entity is still RBS. This will also be changed to NatWest in about a month, said Sood.