Wales Wants A Piece Of Outsourcing

The picturesque territory of Wales in the United Kingdom is stepping up efforts to become a high-tech region that can compete with China, India, and Russia in the outsourcing market. Wales officials told attendees Thursday at the TechXNY conference that Wales will become an option for outsourced financial and IT services.

Dutch-owned ING Direct recently disclosed plans to set up shop in Cardiff. ING plans to run a call center in Cardiff and employ 300 people when it opens. According to the Welsh Development Agency, that will put the number of people in call centers across Wales at 24,000.

Wales also hopes to benefit from a U.K. government edict to move 120,000 London jobs to outlying regions, 600 of which have already have moved to Cardiff. The region also expects that more and more companies will want to split workforces between cities in England and more rural yet affordable places like Wales.

Wales is the right place for high-touch services such as financial and IT outsourcing, according to Andy Williams, an international outsourcing analyst at Revere Consulting Ltd. He lists the education of the workforce and its ability to handle more complex work, as well as the number of financial-services experts already there, as some of the region's strengths. "At the end of the game, customers could go any place," says Williams. "Cardiff must provide the best support."