Companies in the financial service industry are constantly reviewing their operating models in their quest to further streamline internal processes while maintaining a necessary level of flexibility. Focusing on your own skills and expertise will often lead to collaborations with specialised service providers and Fintechs, which can provide operational support and add emerging technologies to the mix.
The complex and ever changing regulatory environment represents an additional challenge for financial players, especially when operating at an international level.
The EBA Guidelines on outsourcing arrangements, which were published in November 2019, aim to further harmonise these requirements across countries of the European Union. While a local transposition into the regulatory framework is currently still outstanding, financial institutions in Luxembourg have already initiated alignment projects for their internal outsourcing procedures, also knowing that the key requirements of these guidelines should be considered as good market practices.
For the third time running, we have asked several business leaders from the financial services industry to see what kind of outsourcing strategies they have, or are planning to put in place.
(Out)sourcing Strategies event
A Sourcing Strategies Survey
WHY?
- To have an overview of the current outsourcing landscape in Luxembourg;
- To better understand drivers, best practices and pain points related to outsourcing;
- To assess the impact of the EBA guidelines on the current outsourcing activities;
- To identify trends, when comparing results with those of our last surveys.
HOW?
We have put together a concise survey of some 25 questions split into six distinct sections. We have sent the survey to CEOs, CIO, CCOs and COOs of leading financial institutions and service providers in Luxembourg and received well over 80 responses. After a thorough evaluation of the responses, we are sharing today the most significant findings on sourcing strategies in Luxembourg.
FOR WHOM?
Regulated entities in Luxembourg that are already in, or are considering entering into outsourcing arrangements.
Key findings
The popularity of outsourcing continues to be on the rise within the financial services industry. The evolving regulatory framework does not seem to have a detrimental effect on this trend, even though requirements related to governance and documentation continue to increase. The extent of delegated activities is remarkable, given that 94% of the respondents are already outsourcing some type of activity, Information Technology being the most outsourced activity in Luxembourg. Reliance on cloud-based solutions is also continuing to gain traction, a trend that was already observed in our previous surveys.
