Exclusive Consultancy goliath Ernst & Young is planning to outsource a number of IT jobs to India in its latest wave of outsourcing.

An email from EY, seen by The Register, told staff it has decided to work with India-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to deliver its application support.

It said: "We recognise this is a big change that affects our people and we have sought to minimise the impact on them. We have already notified the people impacted by this decision and we will support them during this transition.

"The majority will be redeployed within EY or offered a role at TCS to support the EY account. We are also working through the notification process for incumbent suppliers."

According to one insider, almost all the roles in the 300-strong in-house app support and developer team have been earmarked for offshoring. The team spans EMEA and the US, and works with IBM, SAP and Microsoft to deliver tax, audit and fraud investigation tools for EY globally.

This is the third round of outsourcing at EY since 2015. The company has already outsourced its help desk function to TCS, and its more in-depth support services to India and Buenos Aires. The moves will affect both the US and UK.

EY first began outsourcing in 2015, with the latest round bringing the total number of roles affected by the move up to several hundred, said the insider.

"Outsourcing was always in the background as a cost pressure, especially as EY was advising other companies to do it," he added. "In 2012 they brought in a global CIO from JPMorgan who parachuted in her own people in the US firm and ripped the heart out of a global organisation, experienced people in Germany and UK were sidelined and managed out and then the cost cutting started.

"That CIO, Mo Osborne, is now leaving end of June and a chunk of her appointees are going too."

An EY spokesman said the outfit regularly reviews its processes and systems. "Following our recent, independent IT strategy review, we are in the process of transforming how we deliver IT services to provide market differentiation for our clients.

"We are still finalising the recommendations from the IT strategy review and once this has been completed we will then be able to assess the potential impact on our people."

He added that as a consultation was under way in the UK it would be inappropriate to speculate on the outcome "but it is our expectation that there will be minimal impact to roles and people, with the majority offered the same or a similar role in the UK. Our immediate priority is to communicate with our people and to support them."

A number of large organisations have shown renewed interest in offshoring large swathes of their workforce to India. In December, Capita said it will axe roughly 2,250 staff, which includes sending more jobs to the subcontinent.

British Airways has also offshored a chunk of its workforce to TCS. ®