Abbey National is to invest £5.8 million sterling in a new information technology centre and the expansion of telephone banking services in Belfast. Up to 438 jobs are expected to be created over the next three years. The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, who made the announcement, said the investment from a major financial institution was an "enormous boost" to Belfast and demonstrated the faith the UK's fifth largest bank had in the people of Northern Ireland.

Software for the financial sector will be developed at the new IT centre, where 100 jobs will be provided, mainly for graduates. The remaining jobs will be created in a new call centre which will handle customer calls to branches. This is part of a UK-wide expansion of telephone services by the bank and call centres will also be established in Glasgow and Bradford.

The Industrial Development Board (IDB) is contributing £3.3 million towards the cost of the £5.8 million investment.

Dr Mowlam said the endorsement of Northern Ireland by such a successful and highly-regarded UK corporation would help to underpin the peace process and such announcements made a big difference. "Economic growth and economic stability helps encourage people to believe that there is another way forward," she said.

Software development and telephone services are two of the fastest growing sectors in the North. In August, British Telecom announced a £9 million investment in a tele-marketing centre in Belfast, where 150 full-time and 600 part-time jobs are expected to be created. The IDB said the tele-services sector was now set to provide 1,500 jobs in Northern Ireland.

Abbey National's chairman, Lord Tugendhat, said the positive attitude and friendliness of the people in Belfast made it "a natural home" for the sector. "From our existing tele-services operation, we know there is a very good supply of well-educated people here who can do that difficult thing, which is actually to smile over the telephone."

He said this ability made the difference between a good tele-services operator and an ordinary one.

Lord Tugendhat said Abbey National had strong roots in the North because it had operated there for more than 30 years. He said the quality and availability of software graduates from Queen's University and the University of Ulster made Belfast an obvious choice for the new Information Technology centre.

Abbey National, which converted from a mutual building society into a bank in 1989, currently has 20 branches and a number of processing centres, and employs a total of 278 people in the North.

Dr Mowlam said she was very encouraged by the support Northern Ireland had received over the past few months from British, US and European-wide companies. She said the fact that institutions like Abbey National had decided to invest would be "the best argument we have" for convincing other companies to locate in the North.