As businesses stand at the cusp of accelerated technological advancement and global interconnectivity, more people in America are considering scaling their operations within their monetary capacities. The ongoing economic crisis has everyone wondering how to maintain their business without maxing out on their resources, and credit unions especially need to put together various strategies to stay afloat and generate revenue with decreasing deposits and increased lending by modernizing their debt collection strategies.
In the continued pursuit of efficiency, credit unions are considering scaling their operations across the shores and investing in offshore outsourcing. Are there enough avenues available to lighten the load for repetitive functionalities for credit unions so the focus can be shifted back to managing core competencies and pursuing more significant projects? And it seems that it can. The biggest names in the financial industry are not only embracing offshore outsourcing as a viable option for accentuating customer service and relationships, but they are also better for it.
Broadening your Horizons – How Offshore Talent Strengthen Your Operations
There are multiple examples of the biggest companies in finance choosing offshore hiring to streamline their operations, strengthen their core competencies, and, again, strengthen their customer service. It’s as if customer satisfaction directly correlates to more excellent performance and outcomes for these companies, which it does. Here are some of the biggest names in finance that have outsourced their customer services to offshore locations:
Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co
Two of the big 4 in finance, BOA and Wells Fargo & Co. outsourced their support activities to the Philippines. It’s no secret that the Philippines has been at the forefront of customer service outsourcing for quite a while now, with a highly educated and competent workforce working within the offshore industry. These services include customer support, technology services, and human resources management, to name a few.
JP Morgan Chase and Citi Group
Two of the largest banks in the U.S. started outsourcing their customer support to offshore locations and soon went beyond getting voice support to encourage their offshore employees to take on higher-value jobs like analytics. This trend indicates that successful financial management groups see the value of adding offshore competencies to their operations and paving the way for similar groups and companies to follow suit.
Prudential Financial and Principal Financial Group
Are banks the only ones that have hopped on the outsourcing and offshoring wagon? Certainly not, as some of the largest financial companies like Prudential and Principal have outsourced their inbound customer support and administrative services to offshore locations. The breadth of their experience and services needs no crutch, so it is safe to assume that the decision to outsource these operations to offshore locations had a strategic motivation to cut costs and streamline and upgrade customer service and internal functionalities for more retained customer relationships.
Benefits of Recruiting Offshore Talent
Cost-saving is one of the most common benefits of outsourcing operations to offshore locations. When you hire competent individuals in an offshore location, you save on labor costs, whereas in-house or domestic hiring would require a higher salary and probably less expertise. However, hiring offshore talent has more advantages beyond cost-saving, which makes it a lucrative and rewarding endeavor for financial companies.
Diverse Talent Pool
While there is ample evidence that domestic talent has served US financial companies well, 71% of financial services executives have outsourced or offshored some of their services, according to Connext. Post-pandemic, firms prioritize efficiency, and offshore professionals provide that without adding infrastructure and onboarding costs. In addition to that, they belong to a more diverse pool of talent with broader perspectives that domestic employees may not have. Their experience working with various employers and companies makes their input valuable for companies that need exemplary services in technology, customer support, and administration, among other facets.
Excellent Communication Skills
According to a study by American Express, 33% of customers say they’ll consider switching companies after just one instance of poor customer service. Based on this statistic, offshore staffing makes sense for all these vast financial companies prioritizing cordial customer service to retain their customer relationships. Leading offshore locations like the Philippines and Pakistan have a booming younger generation with proficient English-speaking skills who can interact and connect with a more diverse customer demographic, making them valuable to U.S. companies as customer support representatives. These countries are also home to some of the most hospitable people, so they are ideal for communicating with customers and problem-solving when required.
Scalability
There is a constant need to scale your business up and grow your resources for large-scale companies and enterprises like the financial groups mentioned above. Their business volume requires a large staff to accommodate their operations and keep them running smoothly. While hiring and onboarding a workforce domestically requires multiple phases and processes, onboarding offshore talent is significantly more straightforward when scaling your operations up. Offshore workforces are more specific to recruit and onboard and can be increased when the need arises to grow your business operations without additional infrastructure.
Contracting Short-Term Engagements
Unlike domestic employees who often work on long-term contracts, hiring offshore talent comes with the adage of short-term contracts. In the case of technological services, you can find plenty of talented individuals available on a contractual basis for staff augmentation to regulate workflows in busy months or seasons. You don’t have to worry about tying up higher-salaried positions for the long term and getting value-added, timed expertise at a lower cost.
Evolving Expertise
When a company needs to hire professionals in diverse fields, they often have to look at various resumes and select individuals with specific qualifications. In offshore staffing, you can hire customer service or technology professionals and train them to take on higher-value jobs. Just as JP Morgan Chase encourages its offshore talent to develop competencies in higher-value jobs, your offshore talent is an expandable resource that can grow in talent and responsibility according to your needs. Without hiring new resources, you can rely on your offshore talent to take on additional competencies and bridge the gap you have in your productivity or functionality to expand your services and functionalities.
Compliance and Data Security Concerns with Offshore Talent
Most collection companies and credit unions share the trepidation that offshore hiring will mean an eventual breach of confidential financial information, resulting in economic losses. But contrary to popular belief, offshore companies implement robust data security protocols and, thanks to their experience, adhere to broader compliance regulations across various jurisdictions. While this can be a taxing task, offshore companies operate across multiple locations and factor in the data security measures when they offer their services to companies in the U.S.
The issue of data security can easily be managed by relaying the relevant information to offshore companies for customer services or technology and promptly securing any sensitive information where needed. A thorough communication between offshore productions and U.S. officials can mitigate the risk of data breaches. Additionally, offshore companies, credit unions, and financial companies can implement data security measures like audits and firewalls to keep sensitive information confidential. However, due to the higher standard of compliance held by offshore companies, they have better service provision with guarded information channels than domestic employees that require training as an additional cost, which is already baked into the training of offshore staff.
Offshore Staffing for Credit Unions – Yay or Nay?
Financial institutions across the United States have multi-tiered and multi-talented operations and the personnel that make up these organizations. That indicates that they have reaped the rewards of diverse talent pools for a while, expanding their operations and easing financial recovery and collection processes for their clients outside and within the United States. Given this trajectory, credit unions have an expansive influence in the United States, helping thousands of people effectively manage their financial recovery journey. It would be logical to assume that their functionalities can only improve with the onboarding of offshore talent that can augment their operations and empower their core teams to take on more demanding debt recovery and financial health management tasks for their members.
Offshore talent, whether in customer service, administration, technology, engineering, or accountancy, provides every organization with a golden opportunity to expand their operations, scale their business, and influence exponentially. Hiring offshore talent for credit unions will allow them the freedom to service their members more diligently and structurally, handing off repetitive, operational tasks to offshore experts while honing their debt collection strategies to influence and help a more diverse customer population.
Quality of service and talent makes a credit union successful and influential. Based on the industry trends we have seen in recent years; offshore talent has strengthened functionalities for various organizations and increased the coverage of their service offerings to accommodate more considerable debt collection challenges. Before hiring offshore talent, research and ensure you find reliable service providers that can augment your operations and offer true scalability so you can gain the full advantage of diverse and competent talent provided by offshore companies.
