Offshoring in the European Banking and Securities Industries

Celent: European financial services firms will drastically increase their use of offshore resources, with up to 450,000 continental European financial services jobs moving offshore by 2010.

Europe is the fastest growing region for most Indian outsourcing firms, and will continue to burgeon as European firms bring their cost structures in line with global competitors. The report provides an overview and analysis of key trends driving the move to offshore and looks at those European financial services firms that are aggressively offshoring. Further, it looks at the key issues that impact firms’ decisions about offshoring on a country-by-country basis.

As European financial markets continue to liberalize, converge, and grow, banks that are not leveraging the cost savings and experience of offshoring will find themselves unable to compete with lower-priced firms that are. For the moment prices in markets such as France and Germany are elevated enough that banks can make an attractive margin even without offshoring; however, this situation is unlikely to hold over time. Over the next couple of years we will see firms that have not yet started to offshore in an important way continue to experiment with offshoring. Eventually most will come to the point where offshoring has become a standard part of doing business.

As the use of outsourcing and offshoring continues to mature, Celent expects to see more and more firms developing a pool of strategic partners and internal resources across the globe that will work together to deliver a firm’s products and services in a way that maximizes cost effectiveness and performance and minimizes overall risks. This trend toward global sourcing goes hand-in-hand with the move toward long-term strategic partnerships between financial services firms and offshore/outsource vendors. Offshoring in the European Banking and Securities Industries

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