N° 2005-09 Juin 2005 Guillaume Daudin* Jean-Luc Gaffard ...

Offshore Outsourcing in the EU Financial Services IndustryChart 7. Scope of business models (in %)6050403020100Intra-groupJointventureBank /licensedinstitutionNonfinancial(home)Nonfinancial(EU)Nonfinancial(EME)Source: European Central Bank / ECB (2004).3.2. Activities and services outsourcedA look at the types of activities that are reportedly outsourced indicates that most aresupport activities, which in nearly 40 percent of the cases are significantly or completelyoutsourced. On the other hand, outsourcing of core activities such as treasury activities, riskmanagement or asset management is very limited or non-existent at 80 percent of the banks.The identification of core competencies and which functions banking institutions need toretain in-house is becoming less clear-cut as firms extend the range of functions theyoutsource.Banks are increasingly outsourcing activities that could potentially be considered corefunctions. But when banking institutions belong to larger group structures, core activities areoften outsourced within the group. Concerning the support activities (see Chart 8), those mostoften outsourced include IT functions (hardware installation, maintenance, softwaredevelopment) and card processing. Nearly one-third of the surveyed banks had outsourced itstelephone services to a call centres.40