They probably told him that their call centers are in the UK - it's seen as something customers generally much prefer.

e.g. For RBS

"At The Royal Bank of Scotland, all our call centres are based in the UK."

http://www.rbs.co.uk/private/current-accounts/g2/switching.a...

Use your ears. When you are based in Western Europe and call a UK number rerouted to India you have a nice lag and dumping of the voice plus the VoIP noise. This is physics, you cannot escape it, it takes time for the signal to go there and come back.