Banking on consumers in distress

What do you do when the neighbourhood bank in which your hard-earned savings are parked seems to be in distress? Or when are you are unsure about the health of the financial institution whose bonds you have subscribed to?
The instant reaction for most people would be this: Make umpteen calls to the banks (or financial institutions’) call centre. This is the belief at Essar group-promoted Aegis BPO.
“High customer anxiety leads to an increase in the customers’ interaction with the bank; this increases volumes and hence are a source of incremental revenues for us,” Mr Aparup Sengupta, Global CEO and Managing Director of Aegis BPO, said in a conference call with newspersons on Friday.
Aegis follows a pay-per-transaction model; so the greater the number of calls received or made, the higher the billing, say analysts.
This reflects in Aegis’ hiring strategy. In spite of the global slowdown hitting the outsourcing industry, the company has said it will add about 1,000 people a month taking its total headcount to 35,000 by the current fiscal-end.
Though the current slowdown has caused a spike in volumes (in certain areas) for BPO firms, this cannot be seen as a massive driver for sustainable growth, according to Mr Raju Venkatraman, Joint Managing Director & Chief Operating Officer of BPO firm Firstsource Solutions. “However, we have to understand that due to the liquidity crunch, new deals are not happening in the BFSI space. The focus then for most BPOs is to increase volumes with existing customers.”
Mr Venkatraman sees increased volumes in Firstsource’s collections businesses due to the number of credit card defaults and other forms of default reaching an all-time high, especially in the US.
However, not all industry officials concur with this theory. If the customer fears that his bank is going through a rough patch, he would prefer to show up at the bank to take stock of the situation, according to the CEO of another BPO firm.
Separately, Aegis today announced the completion of the acquisition of US-based People Support Inc.