SocGen considers outsourcing 400 back office jobs - Reuters

French bank Societe Generale is pondering outsourcing around 400 corporate and investment back office jobs to Accenture, according to Reuters.

A memo drafted by the CGT union, obtained by Reuters, says most of the affected jobs would be in custody and securities services and that the move could save between EUR90 million and EUR160 million.

A SocGen spokesman confirmed to Reuters that it is talking to an "outside partner" about creating a European back-office custody business that would offer services to other financial institutions.

At least one other French bank is interested in taking part in the project, and 25 are being approached, says Reuters' source.

Related Companies

Accenture Financial Services Société Générale

Channels

Wholesale banking People

Keywords

Post-trade & ops Outsourcing

Comments: (3)

Gary Wright 22 November, 2012, 22:35

Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up

0 likes

This idea services very regularly and nearly always ends in disaster.If it is Accenture they will not i state lose anything. Outsourcing can be done but this idea is crazy.Blood on the carpet looms

Report abuse

A Finextra member 23 November, 2012, 12:41

0 likes

Could this be a re-run of the HUBSYS j-v for payments, launched with PwC in Docklands (2000-01)? Cost £70 million; benefits zero. PwC ordered HP kit because they weren't the auditor of HP and could get a re-seller fee, and then found that they could only have Temenos or an app built in Tunisia running on HP, RS6000, Tandem or Solaris being the platforms for all known payment apps at the time (ACI, Fundtech, Software Integrators..). No problem -Temenos does accounting and we'll just build the payments bit (errr hold on, isn't HUBSYS meant to be specialising in payments processing?). And just one more thing we forgot: HUBSYS is a non-bank and has to charge VAT on its processing fees to SocGen, which cannot offset it. OK, let's shut down then.

Report abuse

A Finextra member 26 November, 2012, 11:52

0 likes

The question is not Why Accenture, but whether SocGen has the capability to modify and evolve the required processes to manage the outsourcing partner. In large outsourcing jobs the failures accrue due to this management control either lack of it or poorly managed.

Accenture or any vendor would show case their past performance, success stories and the best practices to win the deal, but should SocGen or any other client have the risk measurement capability, effective processes and measures in place for remedial steps and/or to penalise, affordability to risk the operations and only depend upon streering committees to monitor on going performance and success of large outsourcing ?

Key consideration for SocGen also should be to engage independent 3rd party project and risk managers to monitor and advise throughout the engagement life cycle. Not necessarily another biggie...