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| Rishi Khosla: His analysts can be treated as an extension of a bank's in-house research team |
BANKS ARE OFTEN the first to boast about the depth of their proprietary knowledge. But if you think this all comes from within the institution, think again. Producing proprietary research is time-consuming, increasingly costly and difficult to increase or scale down to meet business demands. That's why, whether banks are producing analysis of potential M&A targets for an individual client pitch or mass mailing their latest piece of company equity research, the branded piece of bank research in your hand could just as easily have been produced by a team of analysts at an outsourcing company in India as by an in-house analyst based on Wall Street. What's more, it's unlikely you'll ever know the difference.
In-house to outsource
Strangely enough, it's not something investment banks and brokerages like to draw attention to, but farming out research and analytics to India-based companies is becoming increasingly popular with them, as well as other financial institutions. Business process outsourcing is a well-established industry in India, and banks have shipped data entry, basic processing and back-office support functions there for years.