Global insurance giant Sun Life of Canada plans to expand its business process outsourcing operations and possibly set up a call center in the Philippines, taking advantage of the country’s English-speaking human resources.

Sun Life has close to 200 seats in the country handling the information technology requirements of the firm’s operations in the United States and Canada.

“We’re expanding our BPO and potentially moving our call center offices here,” Sun Life of Canada (Philippines) president Riza Mantaring said in an interview on Friday.
The plan was to expand the number of BPO seats in the country by 500 to cater to the IT requirements of Sun Life and Canada, Mantaring said.

“Sun Life certainly has favorable impressions of the Philippines and we expect that the investments will continue,” Mantaring said.

The Philippines is the second outsourcing hub of Sun Life in Asia. The financial giant operates about 1,000 BPO seats in India. Outside of Asia, Sun Life has an outsourcing hub in Ireland.

Mantaring said Sun Life would study the best vehicle for its prospective call center hub in the country, which she said would hopefully rise by next year. “They are already looking at how to set it up,” she said.

The Philippine unit of Sun Life recently moved to its new 14-story headquarters in Fort Bonifacio. Sun Life itself occupies 7 ½ floors while the remaining 6 ½ floors are for rent, attracting multinational giants like Nokia and Philips. The building is expected to be fully occupied in a few months.

“Our timing has been very fortunate because when we finished, demand was very good,” she said.

Apart from investing in BPO and the new building, Sun Life also recently bought into the Yuchengcos’ insurance unit Grepalife, thus acquiring a platform for bancassurance, or the cross-selling of insurance products using bank branches. In this partnership, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. will be the vehicle in selling variable unit-linked insurance (VUL).

VUL, a hybrid between a mutual fund and life insurance, becomes variable as investment returns are dependent on the market performance of the fund where the premium is invested.

In 2007 or before the US subprime crisis, Mantaring said VUL comprised 90 percent of the company’s sale of protection products. During the 2008-2009 period, there was some shift in preference back to traditional life insurance, splitting the business segments evenly.

But this year, even as the financial markets have remained very volatile, Mantaring said VUL has become the dominant segment again, accounting for about 80 percent of the business.

Mantaring said she saw a lot of potential for Sun Life to grow the business especially because only 14 percent of Filipinos have insurance coverage, including group insurance. Individual insurance penetration, however, was much meager at 4 percent.

Mylene Lopa, Sun Life’s chief marketing officer in the Philippines, said the company’s financial literacy program was starting to bear fruit as more than 60 percent of respondents in a recent survey were now thinking of financial planning.

Source:http://business.inquirer.net/33525/sun-life-to-expand-bpo-operations-in-philippines

The Murugappa group has divested its shareholding in Laserwords, a pre-press publishing BPO entity, to SPi Global, a Philippines-based outsourcing services provider.

The group said in a press release the Murugappa Group entities — Carborundum Universal Ltd, Parry Agro Industries Ltd, Ambadi Enterprises Ltd and few other group entities — have divested their shareholding (100 per cent) in Laserwords.

Carborundum Universal, a listed company, had controlling stake of 44 per cent in Laserwords. It has divested its shareholding in Laserwords for Rs 50 crore, Carborundum said in a notice to the BSE. Going by this, the valuation works out to Rs 113.6 crore.

Founded in 1983, Laserwords is an outsourcing partner for some of the leading educational, academic, and professional publishers. It provides a range of solutions such as production, editorial, multimedia, conversion and technology. In 2001, Carborundum, which is primarily engaged in manufacturing of abrasives, ceramics and refractories, acquired controlling stake in Laserwords.

Carborundum had invested Rs 27 crore in Laserwords, said a company spokesperson.

SPi Global, which has been in the content solutions business for over 30 years, has facilities in Chennai and Puducherry. It focuses on scientific, technical and medical publishing.

Source:http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article2598431.ece?homepage=true&ref=wl_home

Philippine outsourcing companies say they are aiming to snag up to 10 percent of the $270 billion global industry by 2016 and are focusing on training more workers to keep up with demand.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines says the country is now the world’s top supplier of call center operators and other voice services. It accounts for up to 7 percent of the overall market that provides banking, transcription, engineering, and other services to overseas clients — a far second to India’s 51 percent share.

Association chairman Alfredo Ayala said Tuesday the Philippines hopes to raise the number of workers from the current 600,000 to 1.3 million and to grow revenues from $11 billion this year to $25 billion by 2016.

Source:http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QA1H1O0.htm

The Philippines has established itself as one of the top destinations globally for services outsourcing, being second only to India, the Philippine government said during the just concluded 58th Session of the Trade and Development Board in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Trade and Development Board, which oversees the activities of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), opened its 58th session last month in Geneva to examine, among other issues, the implications of non-equity modes of international production, which include services outsourcing, contract manufacturing, contract farming, licensing and franchising.

Speaking before the members of the Board, Trade and Industry Undersecretary for Industry and Investments Cristino L. Panlilio pointed out that the Philippines’ cost competitiveness, excellent telecommunications infrastructure, large talent pool, strong public-private sector partnerships, and relatively low risk perception are among the factors that transnational corporations considered in selecting the Philippines for services outsourcing.

Services outsourcing in the Philippines includes voice business process outsourcing (BPO), non-voice BPO in finance, accounting, medical transcription, and other areas, and information technology – electronic service outsourcing (IT-ESO).

Panlilio disclosed that in 2010, the Philippine IT-BPO industry reached $9 billion in revenues, and engaged the services of 530,000 full-time employees in financial services, human resources, IT and software development, management services, engineering design, animation and other sectors.

He noted that the industry now accounts for 60 percent of the country’s total services exports.

In 2011, the industry is expected to generate US$11 billion in terms of services export revenues, and to provide employment to 640,000 people, he said.

The DTI official said that the IT-BPO Road Map forecasts growth to reach USD 25 billion in revenues and to employ 1.3 million workers by 2016 if key challenges are addressed.

In a statement on behalf of the Asian Group, the Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva, Ambassador Evan P. Garcia, noted that three countries — India, the Philippines and China — accounted for approximately 65 per cent of global export revenues related to IT-BPO services in 2009. In terms of licensing activity directed at developing markets, the region comprised almost 80 percent of the total, measured in terms of royalty payments in 2008.

Source:http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/336503/philippines-joins-top-bpo-destinations