Deutsche Bank on Friday announced the start of its Business Process Outsourcing operations in India with the launch of Deutsche Network Services Pvt Ltd in Bangalore for payment and cash management processing.

The 50-member centre has initially started processing US dollar transactions taking place around the world.

This will be followed in a couple of weeks by euro transactions and those designated in pound sterling, according to Wolfgang Gaertner, managing director and chief information officer of global transactions bank IT/operations.

More and more work will be passed on to the centre over time and the staff strength is likely to go several times by the end of next year.

This outsourcing will enable the bank to price its products competitively and meet the highest level of client expectations.

"India has proven ability to provide high quality, cost effective IT processing solutions," Gaertner added.

As it involves processing of high-value payments in real time, which is considered a key business, both in terms of criticality and complexity, Deutsche Bank has decided to keep the work in-house and entrusted it to a fully owned subsidiary.

The bank also has a minority stake in DSL Software, its former fully owned subsidiary, which is now a joint venture with HCL. DSL Software handles reconciliation work for the bank.

The criticality arises partly from the need to keep financial systems intact and comply with extremely rigorous US regulatory requirements, which have been made more stringent after the recent adverse corporate developments in the US.

Another reason for keeping the work in-house is the need to maintain customer confidentiality and comfort levels.

Deutsche Dank has a similar processing centre in Ireland. Though this operation is part of the bank's global processing work and has no link with its India operations, the fact that the bank has established business operations in India is a help, particularly for locating local talent.

Gaertner said he was particularly impressed by the level of skills that the Indian processing operation had been able to put together.