FAST-GROWING Kent Reliance Building Society has angered investors by switching more jobs to India.

The Chatham-based society says the controversial move is designed to cap the cost of growth and make use of better skills more readily available in Pune and Bangalore.

Kent Reliance is following the steady drift of jobs from Britain to India. Financial services have been particularly attracted to the sub-continent, as well as call centre operators.

The mutual society has outsourced software development from India for some time, but is now turning to Indian graduates to carry out back office processing.

Kent Reliance boosted assets by more than 50 per cent last year, and around 30 per cent this year, putting a huge strain on the hundred or so staff in Sun Pier, Chatham.

There has been speculation that Kent Reliance, which has fuelled growth by welcoming investors from outside the county, intends outsourcing most of its routine work to India, and close its branch network across the county.

Martin Crowther, from Herne Bay, has written an angry letter to chief executive Mike Lazenby, claiming he speaks for a number of investors.

He condemned the export of jobs "in the name of profit improvement" and accused the society of putting "yet another nail in the coffin of local communities”.

He told Mr Lazenby that if these things happened "you, as a responsible businessman should carry as a burden of shame”.

Investors believed that service and community were "sometimes more important than mere money and/or profit," Mr Crowther wrote, and urged Mr Lazenby to reconsider the proposals.

Mr Lazenby said he had nothing to be ashamed of.

"Everything we are doing in India at the moment is enhancing our commitment to our membership, our employees and the community we serve," he said. "I don't feel any shame in offering our members a good proposition."

Local temporary workers had been recruited according to demand, but it was hard to find the "quality" of people as and when they were needed.

Well-educated, well-motivated people were easy to find in India, and they were much cheaper, he said.

"Rather than employ temporary staff who might be here for a week and cost a lot of money to train up and then they go, we are using a resource in India to do it."

He added: "It's about cutting our relative costs. The business is three times the size it was three years ago and yet has the same number of staff.

"I don't have any problem using services abroad if it costs us less money because it means that ultimately members get a better deal."

He denied that he was being disloyal to the Medway Towns. No employees in Sun Pier had lost their jobs because of the Indian move. He added: "We have no plans to have any widescale redundancies."

He insisted there were no plans to outsource all work to India, and no plans to close the branches.

However, there would be changes to the branch network, with a possible switch to agency arrangements. They needed a lot of investment and not enough members used them, Mr Lazenby said.

If Kent Reliance did not grow and kept costs under control, it risked going out of business.