British insurance major Prudential has announced plans to move 80 jobs from its finance department to India, including 60 from Stirling in Scotland.
The company has announced that as a result of a reorganisation at Stirling and Reading, up to 80 UK jobs could be lost to India.
A company spokesman said: "It is hoped that many of the roles will be removed through a combination of not filling current vacancies, retirement, internal transfers and people voluntarily leaving the business.
"It is anticipated that there will be a number of compulsory redundancies but it is impossible to put a likely number on this at present."
Prudential, which has its largest site in Britain at Craigforth on the outskirts of Aberdeen, employs about 2,330 people there. It already has more than 1,000 staff at its operation in Mumbai.
Paul Sherrif, Prudential UK's acting finance director, told newspersons: "It's always very difficult to deliver this type of news. But by giving as much advance notice as we can, I hope that people will appreciate that we are being as open and honest with them as possible.
"It does mean that we aren't able to give everybody a detailed breakdown of how this proposal affects them today but we have laid out a clear timetable when we believe we will be able to fill in the gaps".
{{/usCountry}}"It does mean that we aren't able to give everybody a detailed breakdown of how this proposal affects them today but we have laid out a clear timetable when we believe we will be able to fill in the gaps".
{{/usCountry}}Union leaders greeted the news with a mixture of sadness and anger.
Amicus national officer David Fleming said: "We are concerned that further jobs may be moved offshore by the Prudential. It is becoming increasingly clear that no role or job is safe from offshoring and this despite growing evidence of a crisis in the Indian call centre and back-office industry.
Prudential said it would be at least four months before any redundancy notices were issued.