Industry news

The Treasury Select Committee chair Andrew Tyrie, along with other influential MPs, have criticised the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for its light touch approach to high street banking, days before the city regulator publishes a verdict on the sector. The report from the CMA, published during the summer, was attacked by challenger banks for failing to tackle fundamental barriers to competition such as capital buffers and a corporation tax surcharge which appears to punish new comers to the market.

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Related news: UK retail banking has been criticised as not going far enough

Outsourced customer contact centre Ventrica is continuing its impressive growth with the opening of its new contact centre. This expansion and a second site planned in 2017 will create 200 new jobs. The extension is due to an increased demand for its omni-channel customer services. Dino Forte, Managing Director and founder of Ventrica said, “We have attracted a number of new high profile B2C and B2B brands this year who are part of a wider trend of organisations that are looking to outsource non-core services.”

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The National Association of Information Technology Enabled Companies in Nigeria has suggested that the government should explore the possibility of outsourcing. Chairman of NAITEOC, David Onu, said that outsourcing can absorb five million youths from the unemployment market and earn the nation more than $5 billion in the next five years. The outsourcing industry currently generates about 1% of gross domestic product at present, employing over 10,000 people.

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The Indian BPO sector is looking to capitalise on the outbursts of Philippine President, Rodrigo Duturte against the US and Barack Obama. With over a million-people working in call centres in the Philippines increasing hesitancy from US buyers is opening the country to competition from India. Christopher Caldwell, CEO of BPO company Concentrix, said “We have seen some American companies become more hesitant about the Philippines. They have centres there and in other geographies but now they are coming back and looking at India for their investments.”

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The UK government is expected to announce that it is investing an extra £1.9 billion in cybersecurity. The plan will expand specialist police units to combat cybercrime while money will also go on training and educating cybersecurity experts. The £1.9bn to pay for the national strategy was allocated last year and will fund the programme until the end of 2020. The government also is boosting funding for security based start-ups via an innovation fund.

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UK Business Offered a Hand in Cyber Defence

A paper from IfG, the Institute for Government, suggests that by using digital technology more successfully the UK government could save between £1.3 - £2 billion. The report suggests that the government needs to focus attention upon IT and technology investments but is currently distracted by Brexit. "We have reached a tipping point. If the leadership does not emerge to drive the changes, there is a risk that digital teams will continue to be viewed as website designers, brought in only at the very end of policy design processes," the report said.

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Tieto has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Global Channel Reseller program, enabling the company to resell AWS services to both commercial and public sector customers. The program will further extend Tieto´s cloud capabilities, helping customers to be more productive, innovate rapidly and take advantage of new data-driven business opportunities in the Nordic region.

For more, visit the Tieto site.

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Bahrain is investing in its IT industry in a new attempt to diversify the economy of the gulf state. Bahrain hopes to attract foreign IT companies and nurture its own IT community by advertising as the gateway to the Middle East. “Given the geographical limitations in terms of land size, IT is an obvious sector for Bahrain and the government wants to grow it.” said the head of the Bahrain Economic Development Board, John Kilmartin. About 12,000 of Bahrain’s 1.3 million population are employed in the IT sector.

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Cognizant today announced that it has been selected by Centrica, an international energy and services company, as a partner to deliver end-to-end digital assurance as-a-service across Centrica's technology landscape and enhance the efficiency, reliability and user experience of Centrica's web and digital applications and smart devices. Part of the three-year agreement is that Cognizant will standardize and automate processes enabling Centrica to respond effectively to changing business needs.

David Cooper, Interim Group CIO at Centrica, said "The programme will standardize our processes across the Group, ensuring best practice digital assurance and control capabilities, while achieving significant cost savings, too."

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The job of a central banker is not an easy one, even though for much of the last decade (since the financial crash) your main tool has been kept so static that it would fit in perfectly as a Halloween prop. Mark Carney, governor of the bank of England will currently be considering his future, he may leave in 2018 or may extend his term to 2021. Many in business hope Mr Carney will continue, he has been a stable helmsman and has faced many situations (the Scottish referendum and the Brexit referendum) which would normally be scary enough to derail an economy and yet Britain staggers on (GDP growth was 0.5% in the last three months).

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Read the Economist's article here.

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More about the Bank of England.