Building society to open new call centre

NEWCASTLE Building Society expects to hire 500 more staff – including call centre agents -- over the next five years when its new site opens early next year.
It has taken new premises on Cobalt Business Park, North Tyneside, while retaining its HQ in central Newcastle.
Most of the new staff will work for NBS’ company, Newcastle Strategic Solutions, which manages savings, loans, mortgages and pre-paid cards on behalf of third parties, including Bradford & Bingley, Bank of Ireland and savers with Icesave, from Iceland's Landsbanki.
Most of the new jobs will be in “Fully Managed Services”, which includes customer acquisition, application processing, account management, administration services and call centre.
Colin Seccombe, chief executive of NBS, said: “We have recently enjoyed significant growth across the whole business, reflected in our extremely positive half year financial results.
“In particular, our Strategic Solutions operation is continuing to grow rapidly.  Cobalt Business Park offers us the best solution in terms of location and facilities and also meets requirements to replace our current Wideopen site as a business continuity centre.
“We are working with the developers of Cobalt Business Park, Highbridge, to design the high-spec office space which will house state of the art equipment to allow us to continue providing the highest level of service to our customers, as well as improved training and recreation facilities for all our employees.  We look forward to the premises being fitted-out and open for business by early next year.”
The origins of Newcastle Building Society date back to 1861 when the Grainger Building Society was formed.  It now employs more than 1,000 staff across its 37 branches and main offices.
The devlopment agenyc One NorthEast has given a grant of £1.3m to aid the project.  Its chairman, Margaret Fay, said: “NBS is a well respected indigenous business that has bucked the trend to offshore any of its activity.  Rather than look to cut costs by outsourcing work they have chosen a more positive and proactive response in broadening capacity to maximise development opportunities in the UK and Europe.
"This project will create a state of the art document processing facility with an associated contact centre on North Tyneside that will generate 500 new jobs for the North East, which is fantastic for the region and I would commend NBS for its continued commitment to the North East.”

Artist’s impression of the new building	Significant growth: Colin Seccombe, chief executive of Newcastle Building Society