Despite the major crisis in the US financial sector, there is news that US insurance major AIG and financial giant J P Morgan Chase will be expanding their BPO operations in the Philippines.

Published media reports in Manila said that both companies had stated categorically that they saw no reason to believe that there would be a slow down in hiring or scaling up their operations in the offshore sector.

Business World Online website quoted AIG-Business Process Services, Inc which handles AIG's customer service operations on a global scale as saying that the company planned to hire an additional 1,700 staff for a third BPO site in the country.

Similarly, J P Morgan too admitted that they would be expanding BPO operations to service their credit card clientele back home in the United States. The company inaugurated a 14,000 seat call centre facility in Taguig City yesterday as part of its first phase expansion plans in the Philippines.

AIG's BPO arm made it clear that it was on an expansion spree in the Philippines to keep pace with expected higher demand from the parent firm over the next few years and expressed confidence that there would be now slowing down in the near future.

The website quote J P Morgan's senior country operations officer Barry E. Marshall as saying that the company would expand its BPO operations further in the Philippines and hopes to grow its call centre staff to 24,000 in the long-term after starting off with 2000 staff by end of 2008.