Assessing the Role of Outsourcing in a Financial Institution: The Case of Prudential Bank Limited (Ghana).

Abstract

Outsourcing has been growing both domestically and internationally in recent years. Contemporary highly competitive business environment today acts as strong stimulus for firms to go outsourcing. In addition, economic globalization facilitates the process of looking for opportunities on the global market to outsource some of the firm’s activities instead of performing them on their own. However, there are challenges associated with the practice. Methodology used was questionnaires, interviews and observations to collect data for the research work. Interestingly, certain findings were discovered which include benefits and challenges faced by the bank in outsourcing some of their activities. Some of these challenges were known to be quality problems; inability to nurture-in-house talent, poor supplier selection, high cost, loss of managerial control, failure to conduct outsourcing exercise, lack of proper planning and understanding the core activities from non-core activities.

The assessment and evaluation of the findings clearly identified that Prudential Bank Limited outsources its non- core activities and its benefit can be seen in obtaining improved performance, cost savings, access to world class capabilities, accelerated re-engineering benefits, shared risks, free resources for other purposes, improve quality of service and adequate time for management. The study also further identified some of the non-core activities outsourced as security services, catering services, front desk staff, fuel usage and cash picks and species. The research was concluded with the statement that notwithstanding the challenges, outsourcing plays an important role at Prudential Bank limited, since it enables the organisation to enjoy a lot of benefits and also concentrate on their core activities.

Keywords: Outsourcing, Financial Institution, Core and Non-Core