HCL is now firmly entrenched in the UK market, which is a hotbed of insurance BPO. Roughly one-third of UK insurers outsource policy administration, compared to 5% and 4% in Continental Europe and North America, respectively, according to a recent Datamonitor report entitled Trends and Strategies in Policy Administration BPO.

Concentrating on the insurance vertical is not happening only in the BPO arena. In the last three months, Oracle has made two acquisitions that expanded its presence in the insurance space. The first was Adminserver, which propels Oracle into the policy administration space, while its acquisition last month of Skywire Software enriches its proposition to insurers seeking a web-based sales and services offering.

The WNS and HCL deals illustrate the increasing maturity of the Indian BPO space. Indian companies have blossomed from low-cost providers of low-value services into strategic acquirers of foreign assets. This is a natural progression that isn't isolated to the insurance sector.

Indian companies, according to Dealogic, announced 156 foreign M&A deals valued at $13.5bn in the first half of 2008. This is 57% above the same time last year and roughly equal to the whole of 2006.