Wipro Technologies announced on Tuesday a major customer acquisition in the insurance space. It has entered into a wide-ranging software outsourcing agreement with Aviva plc, the largest insurance company in the UK and the seventh largest in the world. Billing will start from the current quarter.

Because of obvious sensitivities in the west over offshoring, Wipro was unwilling to go into the way the engagement is likely to progress.

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But Soumitra Ghosh, vice president, insurance solutions, agreed that "Aviva will be one of our most strategic clients not just for the insurance division but Wipro overall, both in terms of scale and quality of work."

The outsourcing will be across the spectrum of Wipro capabilities like applications development, maintenance, package implementation and infrastructure management.

The deal follows the classical offshore development model and Wipro has already opened an offshore development centre for Aviva.

How work for it will ramp up will depend on how Wipro and TCS, the other Indian vendor chosen, are able to handle their respective tasks.

Currently the engagement will be equally shared by the two vendors over a similar range of tasks.