INDIA CONSIDERS NEAR-SHORING TREND

REPATRIATION of outsourced functions on-shore is posing a challenge for insurance professionals in India, but other areas of opportunity are emerging. Justin Balcombe, senior vice president and country director for the CEE region at 3i Infotech said demand for professionals was falling for the first time in India as a result of what he termed “near-shoring”. He told delegates at the European Insurance Forum that the Chartered Insurance Institute in India had said it was reducing its training programmes by 50% because of the perception that a lot of functions were going back onshore to provide jobs to stimulate the economy. The insurance industry employs around 100,000 people in India, he said. And while that figure is coming down because of the near-shoring, Balcombe said niche services were increasingly going offshore. “People are getting more mature in what is taken offshore,” he told delegates. And he said the service provided off shore in India remained very sophisticated, insisting it was possible to run an insurance company end-to-end from India, with just a salesman on the ground and everything else offshore. Competition from other countries including Vietnam and China was also eating into India’s offshore dominance, he said.