StanChart BPO unit to offer third-party services

Standard Chartered PLC is relooking at the operations of its captive business process outsourcing unit, Scope International.

The plan is to foray into third-party operations by undertaking banking related work for other financial institutions.

Sreeram Iyer, group head for global shared service centre, Scope International, said: "We have the skills and expertise to offer services to other financial institutions. We are in the process of identifying an institution to take this forward. Our aim is to kick start this initiative by mid this year."

Scope International started its operations in 2001. It has two centres, one in Chennai and the other in Kuala Lumpur. The Chennai unit has 3,500 employees. The company plans to add another 500 by the end of this year.

Through this captive BPO unit, the group had saved approximately $80 million in 2004. Iyer refused to comment on the revenue target for the unit once it starts to service third parities.

Before formally entering the third-party realm, GECIS also started undertaking work for customers outside the group while it was a captive unit of GE. Subsequently, GE offloaded 60 per cent stake in GECIS to General Atlantic and Oakhill Capital Partners.

Scope International, analysts said, may go the GECIS way.

However, Iyer pointed out that while the transaction of GECIS was underway, eServe, a third-party vendor turned into a captive unit of Citibank.

"There is no uniform norm. These two companies did what they thought made sense for their respective organisation. Even though we will work for other customers, we will continue to be a captive unit of StanChart," Iyer said.

Scope will offer its services to financial institutions in transaction processing, retail banking, and consumer banking.

Iyer said that Scope is trying to increase the quantum of the high-end work in areas such as risks processes, business analytics and business research. Since it is still building expertise in the high-end work for the group, it does not plan to offer these services to other institutions.