As part of a broader process improvement trend, business process outsourcing (BPO) is gaining favor in the global financial services industry. The gradual ascendancy of BPO corresponds to financial services institutions' (FSIs') internal efforts to stem the inevitable business loss arising from process entropy. FSIs are beginning to invest strategically in cross-functional process and IT improvements that eliminate wasteful steps and increase the visibility of process flows. Bestpractice workflows lead to greater operational efficiency, streamlined customer service, faster time to market, and business agility. BPO makes process transformation for context processes affordable, allowing financial institutions to focus their internal efforts on transforming core processes that are genuine competitive differentiators. More strategically, best-practices BPO yields an even higher business value that enables new business models for disassembling the corporate monolith.
This TowerGroup ViewPoint analyzes the growing "verticalization" and specialization of BPO in the global financial services industry.