Any City-based algorithmic traders who are living in fear that their roles could just as easily be handled out of Mumbai can breathe a sigh of relief – it won’t happen according to one consultant.

Low-cost offshore locations may be hot with banks trying to cut costs, but some roles are in the City to stay. As banks battle for market share, the time taken to execute trades is emerging as a competitive differentiator. And the further trading floors are from clients, the longer it takes.

Lauren Bender, a consultant at IT consulting and research firm Celent says the fractional time lag between placing and executing a trade is becoming increasingly important, and India is just too far away: “Competition for milliseconds is an increasing issue, and when you’re placing trades from the other side of the world the additional milliseconds really do count.”

Were this not the case, Bender says algorithmic trading roles might be prime candidates for offshoring: “There is no reason why you couldn’t develop a model and maintain it in India – that way you could, for example, place trades while New York was sleeping.”

Bender says the likes of Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, and JPMorgan may have been quietly experimenting with offshoring trading jobs: “These banks are ahead of the times, and are so comfortable with the outsourcing mindset that I am sure they’ve attempted outsourcing things as close as possible to the actual placing of the trade.”

Bender also has good news for clearing and settlements staff. Once Indian technologists have honed the process of dealing with exceptions in the settlements process, she predicts jobs will return to the UK. “If you have intelligent machines that can reduce the number of exceptions to the really critical ones that are coming back to the home office anyway, it may prove just as cost efficient to run that technology in London.”