Case study

Standard Chartered Bank

Extending SCB’s offshoring activities

Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), with its two Offshore Shared Service Centres in Chennai and Kuala Lumpur, is among the leading financial services institutions in terms of offshoring activities.

The initial program of global offshored shared services began in 2000. PA played a significant role in helping to achieve substantial benefits, competitive advantage and annual savings that significantly reduced the bank’s cost/income ratio. However, SCB believed that there were further benefits that could be derived from extending and deepening its offshoring activities. Therefore, the bank requested PA’s help identifying and quantifying potential opportunities and defining a process to translate the opportunities into real benefits.

Based on the prioritization of the potential benefit opportunities, PA worked with the client to define the outline delivery plan. We helped the bank to work through a clearly defined process that built on the learning and assets of the initial program, while also addressing the governance and ownership issues internally. The key to the success of the process was executive buy-in and championing of the implementation programme.

As a result of working with PA, the bank was in a position to rapidly understand the magnitude of further offshoring opportunities, effectively building on the successful infrastructure which had been created over the past four years.