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One of the country's leading investment firms has said it expects to increase outsourcing in 2008 , which will save the firm millions of pounds.

Scottish Widows has said that there is a likelihood of many more jobs being sent overseas as part of a major revamp by its owner Lloyds TSB.

In a recent interview, chief executive of Scottish Widows Archie Kane said that his firm has begun to focus much of its effort on outsourcing to cut costs.

"We look at it from the point of view – does it make commercial sense and does it make operational sense to do these things," he said.

He added that although it doesn't plan to outsource customer contact, "things like medical underwriting or administrative processing that goes on behind the scenes, if it makes commercial sense to do it, we will avail ourselves of the opportunity to do so".

This, he says, is part of ensuring that the company always aims to improve "efficiency and effectiveness".

The Scottish-based investment company, which was founded in 1815, was first built to provide widows and female family members with funding in case their male relatives died.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'