Outsourcing and offshoring - a blessing or a burden?

As the debate about outsourcing - particularly offshore - rages, Phil Chapman weighs up the arguments in light of a recent survey of brokers' and insurers' attitudes towards this controversial trend

Striking a fine balance between maintaining customer service levels and reducing cost base is not a new problem to the broking industry, although new issues affecting brokers often exacerbate it. The Insurance Mediation Directive and potential implications arising from the Spitzer inquiry in the US are good examples.

However, the solutions facing brokers to improve their business models are changing both in terms of the number of different paths that are open to them and the varying degrees of