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SA becoming increasingly attractive as outsourcing destination


Cape Town, 11 Nov 2014

With rampant business growth seen in the South African business process outsourcing (BPO) market, WNS South Africa has expanded its footprint through the addition of a fourth delivery centre. This will be the company's third delivery centre opened in Cape Town to cater for increased client demand, particularly from international businesses.

This new centre expansion, which has the capacity to house 800 people, is on the back of the recent introduction of additional contact centre requirements and the rollout of new finance and accounting, procurement, research and analytics, and human resource outsourcing services.

The new development will see South Africa extending its value proposition and moving it further up the value chain as an outsourcing destination to include a broader range of sophisticated BPO services, making South Africa a very competitive destination of choice internationally. However, the interest in outsourcing customer contact centre services offshore to South Africa continues to gain momentum and accounts for a large percentage of the growth.

Johann Kunz, Managing Director of WNS South Africa, says that South Africa as an outsourcing destination appears to be increasingly attractive to international prospects. "What appeals to international businesses and what sets South Africa apart from other outsourcing locations around the world is not only our English accent-neutral talent pool for customer interactions, but also our first-world infrastructure, government incentives and a favourable exchange rate," adds Kunz.

He says the South African BPO industry is maturing and can healthily compete with bigger, more established players in the global market, particularly in the voice customer interactions and correspondence process segments. "However, with more specialised BPO services becoming progressively more prevalent, it opens up a whole new variety of opportunities for South Africa, specifically in the financial services segment.

"This ongoing development is positive news for potential foreign direct investment into the South African economy. In addition, through the creation of more jobs, a positive impact can be made to address the high unemployment rate the country is plagued with," he adds.

Gareth Pritchard, CEO of Business Process enabling South Africa (BPeSA), says over the past five years South Africa has firmly established itself as one of the world's leading customer service locations. "This has been driven primarily by a well-developed English voice offering. In recent times, however, companies have also started using South Africa as a base to service their clients in more complex back office processes. This change has been driven by a mature domestic financial services market, where over 200 000 people are employed in back-office roles. South Africa also has a high quality tertiary education system that has helped to create a sustainable talent pipeline in areas such as law, finance and IT," adds Pritchard.

Recent figures from the Ministry of Agriculture, Economic Development and Tourism in South Africa revealed that the BPO industry in the Western Cape alone is worth R8 billion.

Western Cape Minister of Economic Opportunities, Alan Winde, said: "The Western Cape Government has identified economic growth and jobs as its number-one priority. In line with this goal, BPO has been selected as one of our major focus areas. For overseas companies, our province is home to a talented and dedicated workforce with great English language skills. In recognition of its importance to our economy, we are intent on fostering a business environment which supports higher growth in this sector. I would like to welcome this additional investment by WNS South Africa, and extend my sincere appreciation for the confidence they have shown in our location."

In line with WNS South Africa's growth plans, the additional delivery centre in Claremont makes it one of the largest BPO providers on the African continent by geographic spread. "In order to achieve our key business objective in which we aim to be the leading provider of business process management services in Africa, we will continue to develop our infrastructure to enable the successful delivery of end-to-end business process solutions," concludes Kunz.

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WNS

WNS (NYSE: WNS), is a leading global business process management company. WNS offers business value to 200+ global clients by combining operational excellence with deep domain expertise in key industry verticals including travel, insurance, banking and financial services, manufacturing, retail and consumer packaged goods, shipping and logistics, healthcare and utilities. WNS delivers an entire spectrum of business process management services such as finance and accounting, customer care, technology solutions, research and analytics and industry specific back-office and front-office processes. As of 31 March 2014, WNS had 27 020 professionals across 34 delivery centres world-wide, including China, Costa Rica, India, Philippines, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and the United States. For more information, visit www.wns.com.

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This document includes information which may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the accuracy of which are necessarily subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions as to future events. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied are discussed in our most recent Form 20-F and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. WNS undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

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