Advantages of nearshoring

Reasons why nearshoring in Barbados would be beneficial to financial services and technology firms came into sharp focus on Wednesday during an online webinar.

An event of Invest Barbados and Azurest Partners, it focused on 'Nearshoring Global Expansion Opportunities for Financial Services and Technology Firms in Barbados'.

The webinar’s panel comprised Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Chainhaus, Jamiel Sheikh, Chief Operating Officer with FINTAINIUM, Mark Dinkel and Partner Chancery Chambers, Giles Carmichael. The moderator was Managing Director of Azurest Partners, Jon Walls.

In introductory remarks, Chief Executive Officer of Invest Barbados, Kaye-Anne Brathwaite highlighted why consideration should be given to nearshoring in general and in Barbados in particular.

Among the points she made was the fact that Barbados has “the fourth highest literacy rate in the world”. She also spoke about the pool of qualified and skilled individuals residing on the island who are able to fill required posts and she stated the island is “an enviable place to work, live and raise families”.

“Call it global expansion, call it nearshoring, call it a delivery destination of global business process outsourcing, bottom-line, we are talking about increase efficiencies, potential savings, heighten productivity to give your firms a global competitive advantage. As an English-speaking island cradled by the Caribbean Sea to the West and the Atlantic Ocean to the East, our proximity to the North American market makes us a natural talent pool to support nearshoring,” she additionally stated.

During the panel’s discussion, the cost saving that comes from outsourcing was highlighted. Dinkel in his remarks also made mention of Barbados’ time zone.

“The appeal of Barbados from my point of view is pretty strong because language is simpler to manage, you are in a time zone difference that is much, much simpler to manage. You are not 10 or 12 hours out. The standard fall-back default of course has been usually been India, which is obviously a talented country with a lot of capability, but the time zone challenges are very real and can be very trying and do affect continuity of the service.”

He additionally spoke about the “deep talent pool” on island to accomplish the jobs required.

“You have all the key things you need – you can save money, you have no language barrier or a simpler language barrier than you do with India, for example, the time zone difference make it simpler and you got the talent pool to deliver the services. So that for me is a real driver why Barbados makes a lot of sense and why outsourcing in general makes sense.”(MG)