KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) ? Global bank HSBC Holdings Plc. expects to double its Asian back-office workforce in three years and axe more clerical jobs in the West to help it save more than $1 billion, a top executive said.

The world?s second-largest bank by market value has 13,000 workers in ten global back-office service centres around Asia, providing mainly clerical and phone support and replacing jobs in higher-cost centres in the United States and Europe.

?I don?t have a precise target but I would be surprised if we had less than 15 (global service centres) in three years? time and very surprised if we had less than 25,000 people working in them,? Chief Operating Officer Alan Jebson told reporters.

Jebson, speaking on a visit to Malaysia, where the bank has its biggest global service centre employing about 2,000 people, has a target to save more than $1 billion in the four years ending December 2007 and is accelerating the move to low-cost locations.

Costs are coming increasingly under the microscope at HSBC after major acquisitions in 2003 and last year.

It tied itself to the US consumer by buying lender Household for $14.8 billion in March 2003, but operating net income at its US consumer-finance business fell last year.

This trend of ?offshoring? has provoked a backlash in the West, where clerical work such as processing forms and making credit checks has been shifted to lower cost centres, especially in Asia.

Jebson said the backlash was confined mainly to the Western media and some politicians and he did not expect the bank?s aggressive expansion involving the creation of 500 service-centre jobs a month would present political obstacles.

?It?s not yet affected what we are trying to do,? he said, adding the bank saved about $20,000 for every job it moved.

?In the end, it would take a reaction from customers and we have not had a significant adverse reaction from customers. Politicians and media can do their worst but in the end it?s the customers that matter.?