A new report by independent market analyst Datamonitor (DTM.L) reveals that all is about to change in the relatively mature and fragmented area of horizontal business process outsourcing (BPO) in financial services.
The report, “Horizontal BPO in European Financial Services,” looks at the outsourced central enterprise services of human resources, finance and accounting and procurement across retail banking, insurance and financial markets.
To date it has been fragmented, dominated more by individual task outsourcing than by end-to-end function or shared service center outsourcing. “There is a clear move towards a more strategic view of horizontal BPO manifested through the increasing interest in cross-function horizontal BPO services and complete centralized shared service outsourcing,” says Anders Maehre, financial services analyst at Datamonitor and author of the study. “This shift is being driven by increasing vendor credibility, operational risk regulation and improved acceptance of global sourcing models.”