The financial crisis of the late 2000s, increasingly stringent regulatory requirements, growing competitive pressures, and a host of other factors have vaulted the risk management function to new heights of strategic importance for banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) companies.
Our ongoing research in the sector shows that most enterprises handle risk management out of their onshore headquarters locations, rather than giving ownership of the function to their offshore shared services centers, or what we call Global in-house Centers (GIC).
When we asked BFSI companies why they were keeping risk management on their home turf, they cited several reasons:
What’s the common thread behind all these rationales? They’re all perceptions, rather than reality.
In fact, our research shows that GICs are particularly well-suited to deliver the risk management function. Why?
How can your shared services organization assume responsibility for your enterprise’s risk management function? Like most GICs, yours was probably established to handle scale-oriented transactional work. But risk is about value, not scale. So, you need to change your parent company’s mindset about your group’s capabilities by proactively identifying, proposing, and demonstrating how you can add value and be a strategic partner in managing risk.
Here are a couple of examples that may help get your creative juices flowing:
Our two cents to enterprises: you stand to lose a lot if your risk management capability isn’t up to snuff. Your best solution may be right in front of you, even if not geographically right next to you.
Enterprises that operate in the BFSI industry are the biggest consumers of analytics services. They realized earlier than companies in other sectors how powerful analytics can be in offering targeted and customer-centric solutions, exploiting the massive amount of available data, meeting dynamic customer demands with their expectation for real-time solutions, and helping them adapt to changing business environments.
There are four different regions around the world that provide analytics services to BFSI companies: India, Asia-Pacific (APAC,) nearshore Europe, and Latin America. Each has its own unique capabilities, characteristics, and value proposition.
To help BFSI firms select the right delivery location for their specific needs, we recently completed a “Locations Insider Report” named Global Hotspots – Analytics in BFSI.
Following is a look at the findings. To add context to them, we classify analytics solutions into four types based on their sophistication and business impact, as you see here.
India is the leading delivery destination for analytics services in the BFSI industry. It has a large talent pool (more than 65 percent of the global sourcing FTEs in nearshore/offshore locations,) and offers high cost arbitrage. Because of these factors, a large number of BFSI companies have chosen to set up analytics Centers of Excellence (CoE) in key tier-1 locations such as Bangalore, Delhi NCR, and Mumbai. While both tier-1 and tier-2 locations support traditional analytics services delivery, and largely support customer, fraud, and finance risk analytics functions, advanced analytics services delivery is concentrated in tier-1 cities.
India is also seeing an uptick in start-up activity in analytics services delivery across multiple functions including customer, credit, fraud, and risk. Because these service provider start-ups can provide accelerated access to skilled resources either through partnerships or acquisitions, BFSI companies may want to factor this into their location selection strategy. In the PEAK Matrix evaluation included in our report, Bengaluru and Delhi emerged as “Leaders” because of their high cost arbitrage and significant talent availability. We identified Mumbai as a “Major Contender” due to its healthy mix of cost arbitrage and talent availability, and high maturity in traditional analytics services delivery.
Manila and Shanghai are the top locations in the APAC region. While services delivery is dominated by service providers offering traditional analytics services, a few locations also have a sizable shared services – or global in-house center – presence. The geography primarily supports finance and fraud risk management functions, and some companies are setting up analytics CoEs.
In nearshore Europe, the top analytics services delivery locations are Budapest, Edinburgh, Prague, and Warsaw. While companies leverage the geography for both traditional and advanced analytics, advanced analytics services delivery for fraud and finance risk management is gaining traction, primarily due to region’s availability of high-quality talent and the ability to support work in many European languages. Certain nearshore locations, such as Belfast and Edinburgh, support high-end predictive and prescriptive analytics, not only because a highly qualified workforce is available, but also because of the need for advanced processes to be in proximity with business customers. Just like India, Poland is experiencing an uptick in start-up analytics service providers.
Latin America is an emerging destination for analytics services. One of its key advantages is its ability to provide real-time monitoring and data analysis to the North American market due to its similar time zone. BFSI companies primarily leverage key locations in the region, such as Mexico City and Sao Paulo, for traditional analytics services across risk management functions such as credit and fraud.
Because of all that’s at stake, BFSI companies need to carefully evaluate locations for analytics services delivery against their specific business requirements. To learn more about the global analytics services landscape – availability of both entry-level and employed talent pool, market maturity, cost of operations across top locations, and implications for stakeholders including service providers, GICs, BFSI companies, country associations, and industry bodies – please read our recently released report, “Global Hotspots – Analytics in BFSI.”
Digital services—especially automation, analytics and cloud—continued to dominate outsourcing activity
The global sourcing industry posted healthy numbers for Q4 2018, marked by an 8 percent increase in outsourcing transactions and a 13 percent increase in Global In-house Center (GIC) setups and expansions over the previous quarter, according to Everest Group.
Digital services continued to dominate the outsourcing activity in Q4, with 74 percent of all outsourcing transactions comprising digital-focused services as compared to 26 percent of transactions focused on pure traditional services. Cloud services were included in 44 percent of all digital-focused transactions for the year.
“The global services industry enjoyed a fourth consecutive quarter of growth in Q4 2018, with digital services activity continuing its upward trend,” said H. Karthik, partner at Everest Group. “Two key areas of service provider activity in Q4 demonstrate this strong emphasis on digital services. First, service providers such as Accenture, DXC Technology and TCS announced acquisitions of startups to enhance their interactive digital content capabilities. Secondly, several service providers announced innovative partnerships with educational institutions in their attempts to bridge the digital skills gap. For example, Accenture announced a partnership with Georgia Institute of Technology, IBM is teaming up with IIT Delhi, and Infosys is joining forces with Cornell. We will continue to see service providers investing in acquisition and partnership strategies to strengthen their digital services capabilities in the year ahead.”
Everest Group discusses these and other fourth-quarter developments in its recently released Market Vista™: Q1 2019 report. The quarterly report highlights the trends in the fast-evolving global sourcing market, exploring the key developments across outsourcing transactions and Global In-house Centers (GICs), as well as location risks and opportunities, and service provider developments.
Additional highlights from the Market Vista: Q4 2018 report:
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Since the early part of this decade, when technology-backed disruptions started knocking on businesses’ doors, FinTech – or financial technology – transformation has been one of biggest opportunities for BFSI companies. But while they’ve consistently accelerated their transformation journeys, BFSI firms and the FinTech providers themselves have been impeded by multiple complex challenges. These include stringent regulatory requirements, exposure to cyberattacks, lack of customer trust, limited government support, and, most importantly, limited opportunities to refine and train their analytics engines in real environment.
The good news, however, is that now, even government bodies are starting to take up agendas to facilitate and foster FinTech innovation. Over the past two years, multiple countries, including Denmark and the Netherlands, have come up with their own versions of regulatory sandboxes to promote activity in the FinTech space. In addition to attracting a multitude of players looking to innovate and deliver FinTech services, these sandboxes have also contributed significantly to the overall business growth in the countries in which they’re located.
Against this backdrop, let’s take a look at Lithuania’s newly-established FinTech sandbox through multiple lenses: what it means for the participants, how it will impact the country’s global services industry, and factors that BFSI and FinTech firms need to focus on to leverage innovation opportunities from these types of initiatives.
On October 15, 2018, Bank of Lithuania kickstarted a regulatory sandbox for FinTech start-ups and BFSI firms. The goal is to enable the companies to test their new products/solutions in a live environment with real customers, while Bank of Lithuania provides consultations, simplified regulations, and relaxations on supervisory requirements. After successfully testing their new products, the companies can implement them in a standard operating environment.
While the Lithuanian FinTech market experienced 35 percent CAGR growth between 2015 and 2017, we expect it to grow by an additional 35-45 percent in 2019-2020. The FinTech sandbox will contribute significantly to this growth. Other drivers will include:
Here are several aspects of Lithuania’s service delivery growth story that we expect to see in the next couple of years.
As BFSI and FinTech continue to walk the transformation tightrope in the everchanging regulatory space (e.g., PSD2 and GDPR), they need to focus on the following factors to successfully grow:
The good news is that the push (or pull) towards FinTech transformation is in same direction for all leading stakeholder groups – service providers, buyers, collaborators, customers, and government bodies. But, because the least informed is often the most vulnerable, BFSI, FinTech firms, and companies seeking their services must stay informed and keep looking for opportunities and solutions.
To learn more about other key emerging trends in the FinTech space, please read our recently released report, FinTech Service Delivery: Traditional Locations Strategies Are Not Fit For Purpose.
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