FE Report
Bangladeshis living abroad with their overseas links, exposure and expertise can play a pivotal role in faster expansion of the country's Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, experts opined Friday.
Apart from evaluating the non-resident Bangladeshis (NRBs) as untapped BPO promoters, they, at the same time,   suggested strong control and monitoring of IT security within the financial institutions as well as their BPO partners to prevent any data leakage.
"If we look at the example of India which now shares the major segment of the global BPO market, it is their skilled expatriates working for Silicon Valley and other multinational giants who have brought the global BPO clienteles to the Indian soil," an industry expert said as an example.
"NRB professionals living abroad can play the same role here to promote Bangladesh as an attractive BPO destination and to bring the global entities to our shore."
Speakers said Bangladesh's success in the readymade garment sector can be an example to emulate for the local BPO industry.
"A lot of credit for the success in the RMG sector goes to the international buying houses who really lifted up our apparel industry," another speaker said, adding: "We need to follow a similar approach in attracting the international BPO clientele in Bangladesh."   
The opinion came at a session on 'Outsourcing Financial Services: Win-win Situation for BPO and Financial Sector' during a two-day BPO Summit that concluded in the capital Friday.
Financial-sector leaders participating in the session also called for stronger control and monitoring of IT security issues within the banks as well as their BPO partners against the backdrop of recent central bank heist by an intercontinental racket.
"Financial institutions deal with a lot of sensitive financial information of a wide range of clients. Therefore, ensuring adequate data security is a critical issue for the banks and their outsourcing partners," said Arshadul Hasan, Chief Information Officer of Standard Chartered Bangladesh.
Hasan pointed out that the most critical thing in assuring data security in the financial institutions is ensuring proper controls and monitoring.  
"If we look at the recent central bank heist, it appears that despite using world-class software, the debacle happened due to the lack of control and monitoring," he said to underpin his suggestion.
Mr Hasan said the responsibility of ensuring IT security within a bank should be vested in Chief Security Officer to ensure proper monitoring of data-safety issues.  
Usually the data security issues are being taken care of by the audit department which, in most cases, is not adequate, he told the meet.
"Therefore, every bank in the country must have Chief Security Officer who will supervise that proper data security measures are being taken by that particular banking institution," he said.
Speakers in the session also highlighted the global practices that can be replicated in Bangladesh for effective business-process outsourcing within the financial sector.  
"For the financial services companies, technology and security issues are often regarded as noncore activities which they like to outsource to the BPOs," said Arijit Chakraborti, Executive Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers in India.
"But for a BPO service provider serving that particular financial institutions, it is often the main revenue generator where they need to prove that they have sufficient competitive advantage to safeguard the data of a financial institution," he added.     
Panelists also stressed awareness building among the BPOs and bank customers about the IT-security issues.  
"Banks should maintain a set standard about password designing to prevent data leakage and there should be provisions for password changes after a certain interval," said Tapan Kumar Sarkar, Founder President of CTO Forum Bangladesh.  
"Banks should also be cautious about data transfer through external hard drives while access to the bank intranet and email system should also be highly restricted," he added.    
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Source: The Financial Express