Quest Research expands in India

Quest Research, the Hong Kong based corporate research house, has opened a new data processing centre in India to handle a rapidly increasing amount of work. Quest Research provides companies with back ground checks on employees, business partners and potential clients.

In the light of new rules on knowing your clients and regulatory-mandated transparency rules, business is booming. "The opening of the new research centre... is fundamental to our long term growth strategy due to the dramatic increase in the demand for pre-employment and business partner screening services," says Mike Short, managing director of Quest Research in Hong Kong.

The new centre will house up to 100 staff who will be involved in scouring through publicly available records from universities, schools and colleges as well as other legal documents and sources to ascertain if people are who they say they are. They will also use Quest's Integrascreen database, which warehouses much of the publicly available information for compliance screening purposes.

"Our database is unique as it consolidates extensive amounts of regulatory and publicly available information on Asian individuals and organizations, hence facilitating in depth client screening and compliance with enhanced regulations," says Nick Green, business development manager of Quest Research.

"Clients will be able to use the solution to access detailed biographies, photographs and information on business persons, politically exposed persons and corporate entities throughout the Asia region."

The firm is the latest in a long line of global companies that have moved back office, processing and service backbones to India, taking advantage of the country's low labour costs, high educational standards and English language abilities. Last week HSBC announced that it was to shift some 4000 jobs from its UK operations to new back office centres in India, as well as to Malaysia and China.

Quest Research is also looking to hire a raft of new staff in its India processing centre. Suitably qualified finance professionals with MBA or accounting backgrounds should contact the firm.