While the board appointed by the Centre to salvage Satyam Computer Services continues its clean-up act, the flailing IT vendor is losing big-ticket clients. Assurant, a Fortune 500 firm (ranked 309) and Visa Inc, the world’s largest electronic payment gateway, have both served contract severance notices to Satyam in the last two weeks.

The firm’s new board has so far admitted to losing only State Farm Insurance of the US from its client base of 690, as of September 30, 2008. The board last reported this client base on January 16; after that it dropped specific numbers on its client base from its New York Stock Exchange profile.

Insurance major Assurant, which manages over $25 billion assets and has annual revenues of $8 billion, has moved the work Satyam had been managing for it, to another Indian IT company—Zensar Technologies. “Assurant did not want to work with a vendor that has been involved in such a high level fraud,” said an industry insider.

Global payments player Visa Inc, a part of its international payment gateway was run with Satyam’s services, is learnt to have severed its ties with Satyam due to concerns following the World Bank’s revelation of an 8-year ban on Satyam in December.

Kiran Karnik, recently anointed chairman of Satyam’s new board, declined to reveal any ‘client-specific’ information. “The company has had a few losses and some gains. But, this is a routine affair with IT companies and we are not worried about it,” Karnik told FE.

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