In one of the largest business process outsourcing (BPO) transactions in the financial services sector, Slaughter and May advised Aviva on the sale of its offshore operations, Aviva Global Services, to WNS (Holdings) for US$221 million.
The deal includes BPO operations in India and Sri Lanka that employ more than 5,800 people.
The transaction will enable Aviva, a leading provider of life and pension products in Europe, to realize the value of the offshore operations it has been developing since 2003, while continuing to benefit from the expertise it has established in that time.
The parties also entered into a master services agreement (MSA), which sees WNS become the strategic BPO service provider to Aviva’s business units located in the UK, Canada and Ireland for a period of eight years and four months.
Based on the anticipated service requirements of these businesses, it is estimated that the MSA could generate around US$1 billion in revenue over the life of the contract.
Partners Rob Sumroy (outsourcing), Jonathan Marks, Jeff Triggs (corporate), Ewan Brown (dispute resolution), Matthew Bunting and Graham Earles (tax) managed the deal.
