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The Western Provident Association (WPA) signed an agreement with the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) to set up an office in Colombo that will employ over 100 local professional staff. The staff would be involved in processing insurance claims at a service centre in Colombo.

"Sri Lanka's location is a major reason why the company wants to establish itself in Colombo, Western Provident Association's CEO Julian Stainton said in Colombo last week. Since Sri Lanka is five hours ahead of the United Kingdom, WPA will have a valuable head start. The possibility to relocate such a vital area is now possible by the use of modern technology. The WPA CEO told the journalists that the WPA has always invested in advanced communication systems to cut down the time of response of the company in order to offer their clients the best possible service.

When asked by some members of the press whether the WPA is interested in areas other than medical insurance, Stainton said that their company decided that they should focus on what they are good at and that there were no plans to diversify. Many companies had lost their focus by venturing into areas they were not familiar with. Sri Lanka's strong points are the high standard of education and infrastructure that make it possible for this large private medical insurance company to relocate this function in Sri Lanka. WPA, a company that is more than a century old represents about 7% of the British medical insurance market.

While Sri Lanka will play an important role in this company's operations, WPA also maintains a significant operation in Bangalore. The CEO said that the Sri Lankan office would be working closely with the one in the southern Indian city but would also function as a type of back up in case of problems in India.

As Britain already has an excellent national health system, private medical insurance services are aimed at the upper end of medical services for individuals who do not want to wait for their treatment. Large companies are also clients of WPA and enrol their executive staff in such schemes.

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