Outsourcing: Kiss of death to research?

Every year or so the threat of losing jobs to outsourcing looms its head and shakes the core of a few aspiring monkeys. You’ve worked hard in college, you’ve busted your ass to get those internships, and now that you’re finally at the cusp of pursuing your career the banks seem to have found another way not to hire you.

A little exaggerated yes, but with SocGen's recent hiring of India-based Copal partners for its ER, the outsourcing “threat” has again been raised.

I thought it’d be good to dissect which parts of finance should be on yellow alert, and maybe see how this would affect Wall Street’s future.

Let's start with banking; at the "bitch" levels investment banking could definitely be outsourced- and some of it already is. Copal even says that their specialty is making pitchbooks. MD’s however prefer actual people to scream and throw printers at, so we probably won’t be seeing smashed monitors on a daily basis anytime soon.

Sales in S&T won’t be going anywhere, but some have argued that plain vanilla trading would be wiped out by BPO. I don’t think that’s the case and I believe that if anything would wipe out trading it would be advancing technology, rather than outsourcing.

Equity Research however is in a pickle, not to put it down but I think anyone who understands the markets, is versed in fundamental and technical analysis, and can put his thoughts on a stock eloquently can be a researcher. Firms like Copal know this and could theoretically pose a threat to analyst jobs in the US and in the UK- places where they've incidentally been gaining a lot of business.

Thing is, most of the BB’s have been already outsourced their research and some even partially own these firms- which totally makes sense for them, why pay hundreds of thousands to an analyst if someone else can do it in Asia for almost 75% less right?

But what does this mean for ER people?

Should they be looking over their shoulder for the outsourcing monster?

Or is this just overblown job hunt paranoia?

What do you think?

 
Best Response

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There have been many great comebacks throughout history. Jesus was dead but then came back as an all-powerful God-Zombie.
 

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Still not sure if I want to spend the next 30+ years grinding away in corporate finance and the WSO dream chase or look to have enough passive income to live simply and work minimally.
 

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