Job uncertainty at outsourcer Capita after lower profit forecast

Hundreds of jobs in Ireland at outsourcing company Capita will be affected as its UK parent reveals plans to sell several divisions and cut positions after lowering its profit forecast for the second time in three months.

The London-based group, which had 78,000 employees at the end of last year, plans to cut more than 2,000 jobs and sell a number of businesses amid growing uncertainty among UK financial firms about Brexit. This has prompted clients to hold back on agreeing outsourcing deals.

Capita, which employs 3,300 across the Republic and the North, said in a trading update on Thursday it plans to sell the majority of businesses in its Capita Asset Services division and a small number of other units it no longer wants.

Specifically, Capita said it was selling businesses within the Capita Asset Services division which provide shareholder, fund, debt and banking solutions and trust and corporate services. It is understood about 500 employees on the island of Ireland are in this division.

Skills shortage threatens Dublin’s post-Brexit finance boom

---

Central Bank’s INBS inquiry panel can claim €750 per day

---

Banks fined €485m by EU commission insist they did nothing wrong

---

Ex-Permanent TSB chief executive got no extra compensation

---

The business has become best known in recent years for managing and administering loans on an outsourced basis for banks, Nama and buyers of loans sold during the crisis. Earlier this year it took over the management of the legacy loans of Dutch-owned ACC Bank, which stopped doing business in 2013 and handed back its banking licence.

Business transfer

It is expected most positions in the businesses put up for sale will transfer to the new owner at the end of the process.

A spokesman for the company declined to comment on the implications for the Irish operations.

Capita opened its first office in the Republic in 2000 following its purchase of IRG Registrars, providing share registration and employee-share-scheme services to some of the country’s main publicly quoted companies.

Most of Capita’s staff in Ireland work in the area of information technology outsourcing as well as back-office services to the life and pensions sector.

In October the Central Bank fined the group's Capita Life and Pensions Services (Ireland) unit €1.15 million for acting as an investment business firm for almost a decade without proper authorisations from the regulators in Republic.