A NORTH-EAST outsourcing firm has secured a five-year deal to work with the UK’s largest energy supplier.

Parseq, which offices in Sunderland, says it will handle about 20,000 mail items every month for Centrica.

Centrica’s businesses include British Gas.

Bosses at Parseq said it won a tender to manage legal and financial documentation, cheque processing and cash payment processing.

Craig Smith, Parseq divisional managing director, said: “Because each piece of post Centrica receives needs to be acted upon immediately, it needed to be confident that changing supplier wouldn’t impact on service delivery.

“There is no margin for error.

“Although this contract hasn’t been awarded to a new outsource provider for a number of years, we’re proud to say our expertise and proven experience demonstrated we could not only do the job, but also add improvements and efficiencies to it.”

Parseq has further bases across the UK and processes more than 100,000 documents every day as well as £2bn of electronic payments a month.

It also makes and receives about over 70 million calls a year for clients.