Banks could widen their digital financial services to customers manifold by way of taking support from outsourcing companies, experts and industry insiders said yesterday.

Operational cost of banks will go down significantly and the standard of financial services will strengthen in tandem if they could use the service of business process outsourcing (BPO) companies properly, they said at a discussion on Outsourcing in Financial Service Sector.

The event was jointly organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Bank Management (BIBM), the Leveraging ICT for Growth (LICT), a project of Bangladesh Computer Council under the ICT division, and Bangladesh Association of Call Centre and Outsourcing (BACCO).

Banks are still facing a lack of trust to get service from BPO companies, but many well-reputed foreign companies have already kept their faith on them, they said at the discussion held at the BIBM office in the capital.

The business volume of the local BPO companies is now close to $400 million per year, but they have set a target to increase the market size to $1 billion within 2021, said Wahidur Rahman Sharif, president of BACCO.

About 50,000 employees are doing their job in the outsourcing industry, but the number will increase to 1 lakh if the business volume of BPO companies can be achieved as expected.

“Outsourcing in the banking sector of India, Philippines and other peer nations of Bangladesh is much larger than our industry.”

The business volume of the local outsourcing sector will increase at least 40 per cent from the existing size if banks get services from BPO companies full-fledged, Sharif added.

Well-reputed companies from across the globe hardly produces any product by using their own components as such policy help them reduce their production costs, said Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

“We want to establish a paperless office to ensure a cashless society. And outsourcing companies can play a vital role in implementing the roadmap.”

The member organisations of BACCO will have to enhance their capacity to give a boost to the digital Bangladesh programme, Palak said.

Banks usually take call centre support and data entry services from BPO companies, but they could take many other services like cyber security, data analysis and IT audit and so on, he said.

Lenders have to invest huge sums of money to set up and operate data centres, but they can transfer the operation to BPO companies, which will reduce their costs significantly, Palak added.

Md Mahbubur Rahman Alam presented a paper on Outsourcing in Financial Service Sector, where he highlighted different outsourcing services that will help banks to expand their businesses at a lower cost.

BPO companies will help banks to: verify know-your-client, monitor their employees, get early alarms for fraudulent transaction, collect deposits and settle payment processing, he said.

Md Akhtaruzzaman, director general of BIBM; Shah Md Ahsan Habib, professor and director of BIBM; Sami Ahmed, Policy Adviser of LICT; Md Rezaul Karim, project director of LICT, spoke among others.