TowerGroup has long believed that outsourcing in Europe is inevitable based on the experience of banks in the United States.
Outsourcing covers a range of approaches, not all of which will prove successful in Europe, and although only a small number of banks currently do outsource, a quiet revolution is taking place.
Not only are there many forms of outsourcing, but many different kinds of organizations are offering outboard processing.
Banks seeking to outsource need to be very clear about why they are outsourcing and determine whether they are making a tactical or strategic decision; short-term thinking can be fraught with danger.
Outsourcing in the correct form can support both tactical and strategic decisions; in the wrong form, it becomes a one-way street and will define and ultimately limit the scope of future strategy.
Because outsourcing is relatively rare in payments, a bank needs expertise in business, information technology, and domain to ensure that it selects the right form of outsourcing that will in turn help narrow the choice of provider
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