Bradford-based credit firm Provident Financial Management Services has invested more than £1m in its Sunbridge Road base.

The money has been used to build a state of the art call centre which will eventually streamline its operations and result in more jobs for the area.

The company is the city's biggest PLC with over 4,000 employees and since the centre's official opening, on October 4, 20 new jobs have been created - there are plans for more in the next 12 months.

A spokesman for the company said: "We already had a contact centre at our headquarters but we needed to expand on that and build this larger venue,

"It will seat more people than the previous site and we will continue to recruit more staff over the next 12 months."

The company, which gives loans to people with few credit options, hopes that the new technology at the centre in the form of upgraded software, known as Pivotal, will lead to improved service for customers.

Customers will be able to phone one low cost number and details of their call can be transferred via email, fax or phone to their local branch.

"The new system represents a great leap forward in our ability to communicate with both internal and external customers," said Dale Cordingly, Provident's operations and risk management director.

"One of the most important features is that all customer focused departments will be able to use the same system to record all customer contacts, cutting out unnecessary duplication and gaps in the information we hold."

The implementation of the system has been overseen by Softlab, a subsidiary of BMW which specialises in providing customer management solutions.