The FSU (the Australian Finance Sector Union) has launched a new website – Bank Check – as part of its campaign against offshoring. This is an interesting, and perhaps inevitable, move. Customers do deserve to know where their data is going and the banks need to do more to make a case for it, so that naked scare campaigns have less of an effect. I would prefer that the FSU were more balanced in their approach to this – there is the presumption behind the site that all offshoring is bad – but to expect that from them is to expect a bit much.

I am also interested that they concentrate on offshoring only, rather than outsourcing – where domestic outsourcing is done the FSU is ignoring it. This gap shows where they are truly making their case – a seeming belief that things are less secure if outside Australia. Granted, the legal protections can be less secure and there has been some publicity on data theft in India, but to implicitly say, as the FSU is doing, that overseas is bad and domestic is good is just plain wrong. Still – it is up to the FSU to protect the jobs of its members and for the banks seeking to outsource to make the case to thei

r customers.