DUNCAN BRIGGS: Sure. Yes, happy to do so. So I've been with WTW for 31 years, initially in the UK, but the vast majority of the time has been in the U.S. I'm a life actuary by background and I work with live companies, both in the U.S. and also more broadly on a range of topics that have an actuarial theme to them. And I'm happy to be here today.
INNA KOGAN: Thank you and welcome, Duncan. Marcela, can you please introduce yourself?
MARCELA ABRAHAM: Sure, Inna. So I am Marcela Abraham. I have been working for WTW for a little bit more than 20 years and working within the insurance industry for over 30 years. I'm based in Mexico City, but I oversee our market consulting and technology services all across Latin America.
INNA KOGAN: Thank you and welcome, Marcela. Shankar, can you please introduce yourself, too?
SHANKAR RAMAN: Sure. Thank you Inna. Yeah, I've been with WTW for a collection of over 20 years now. I began my career in our Singapore office. My background is in general management consulting, and these days I tend to focus on organization, transmission, the future of work and how the forces of technology and changes in the workplace impact work and the workforce. I also lead a technology industry group for W & R globally, but I work across a wide range of industries. Delighted to be here.
INNA KOGAN: Thank you very much, Shankar, and welcome. I'm happy to have you all on the show. Now, as you may know, we like to learn a little bit more about our guests on the show before we jump into our main topics. So today's question is hopefully very simple. What is your favorite food? Let's start with Marcela.
MARCELA ABRAHAM: Good. Well, this may sound a little bit of a cliche. I would say tacos.
INNA KOGAN: Very nice. And Duncan?
DANCAN BRIGGS: I'm going to continue the Mexican theme, and I'm going to go with mole washed down by margaritas.
INNA KOGAN: Awesome. And, Shankar?
SHANKAR RAMAN: So are three in a row. I'm a vegetarian, so I like all vegetarian Mexican food. I like tacos, burritos. I like corn, everything Mexican.
INNA KOGAN: Very nice. Thank you. I thought we would get a little bit more of a variety, but looks like Mexican food won today. Let's now jump into our main discussion. Competition for talent and technological advances is leading companies to explore different ways for getting work done. What are some of the trends that you're seeing?
SHANKAR RAMAN: Sure. I'll take that. The world of work, as we know, has become more complex and different than what it used to be, say 10 years or even 5 years ago. There are multiple forces at play, particularly in the United States and globally. The primary forces of change include a combination of technological, demographic, changing consumer preferences, and geopolitical pressures combined with economic uncertainty. In the United States, our population as a whole is aging, and the proportion of the workforce that is eligible to work is shrinking because of natural causes. This, coupled with a strict immigration regime, creates talent challenges in the country.
Now, the second big force of change that we need to understand is AI and automation technology. These continue to impact the workforce, and the impact is not limited to just repeatable or transactional work, but also in clearing what we call brains-based work. And AI is becoming more ubiquitous. While still significant advances need to be made in the application of AI at scale, it is continuing to impact all domains of our daily life.
But this move of AI does not come without risks. It comes with issues, challenges such as data privacy, hallucination risks in generative AI, particularly, for example. There are issues related to ethics as well. And finally, security risks. Along with this rapid evolution of technological landscape, companies continue to therefore undertake-- are evaluating different ways of getting work done. And that means looking at obviously AI, but also looking at other-- is there opportunity for moving work to offshore locations, to outsource work, or to nearshore?
In fact, there's a term that we like to use, which is called SECAR, which is simplification, elimination, consolidation, automation, and relocation. And in this spaces, that's where nearshoring is one of those increasingly prevalent ways of getting work done on increasing trend that allows companies to relocate work while using consolidation and automation.
INNA KOGAN: Very nice. Thank you. So let's now focus on nearshoring, which is the central topic that brings us here. How is it different from the traditional offshoring that we've been hearing about over the past few years?
DUNCAN BRIGGS: Yeah, I can take that one. So offshoring is certainly not a new concept. It's been around for a few decades now, I think. And for many years U.S. companies have looked to offshore work, in many cases to India not exclusively. There's other countries that are offshore locations as well. But oftentimes it's India that U.S. companies are going to. I think that the key difference between that type of offshoring and nearshoring is, as the name suggests, nearshoring is effectively offshoring work to a near location.
So the key difference is, firstly, you've got much better time zone alignment. So the work is done in a time zone that's the same or very similar to the U.S. time zone which I think in and of itself can lead to a lot of advantages. So in many cases where companies in the U.S. work with India, what can happen is that the team in India, let's say early in their day, they have a question about what they're doing. They send an email to the U.S. It's the middle of the night in the U.S.
It could take eight hours for the reply to get back. Meanwhile, the team in India has finished their work day so they don't look at the reply until the next working day and then they might have another question and so on and so on. So it's challenging to work in real time when you have that type of difference.
Now contrast that with nearshoring where you're aligned from a time zone perspective. You can really work in real time. So I think that's a big advantage of nearshoring versus traditional offshoring is that you have that time zone alignment in working real time and getting the work done. I think the second advantage I would highlight, and the second difference, is, again, because of the location being relatively close, it's a lot easier to send people from the US to the offshore location and vice versa to send people from that location to the U.S.
So if you think about things like training, we might want to train the offshore resources. If you can get on a plane for a couple of hours and be there and do that, that's a lot easier than spending a whole day traveling to somewhere that's a much further away. So that's an advantage. And then similarly, I think in some cases, you might want the offshore resources to work on site with a client. It's a much easier to do that if they're a couple of hours away than if they're a day away.
SHANKAR RAMAN: Let me add to what Duncan said. As Duncan mentioned, there's clearly a big advantage because of the better time zone alignment. In addition because of the better time zone alignment, there's also likely to be what we find from our work better cultural compatibility, and the access to real time communication. And nearshoring, you're likely to be working with folks who are geographically closer to you, and so you're likely to have better-- the ability to communicate more effectively and the cultural alignment tends to be a bit better, which diminishes the risks of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
This is an issue that we see happen very often in offshoring environments across different locations, particularly teams in India and other locations where the amount of lateral coordination required between the teams tends to be pretty high. Nearshoring is a good way of trying to address that.
The second thing that also is because you're in the same time zone, your ability to get responses back faster. The ability to get on a phone and solve problems out actually is far greater. And so your cycle time for product development is likely to be quicker when you're using nearshoring resources as well.
INNA KOGAN: So WTW actually had experience on adopting these non-traditional models. Can you tell us about this?
MARCELA ABRAHAM: Let me take that one. And so actually our best credential is our own experience. So we do have an actuarial team based in Mexico City that supports our consulting projects in the U.S. and Canada. We started this group back in 2015, but the idea goes back a couple of years before. So there was a strategic initiative of using offshoring more broadly. Back then, our UK team had been offshoring recruiting work to India for a few years, and top management wanted the U.S. and Canada to do the same.
So we had a decent sized consulting team in Mexico City, and there was a big number of actuaries graduating every year in Mexico. So we raised our hand and say, hey, why not Mexico? And so of course, we had to perform some feasibility studies at least. But at least there was a question and a question mark about doing it in India or somewhere else?
And offshoring was a management decision. So it was going to be done despite the pushback because we got a lot of pushback initially from the people that was going to be impacted. And when I say impacted, that means having to work with someone who is thousands of miles away. So we explore different cities. And finally, we chose Mexico for the reason Duncan and Shankar has just described. And plus the fact that there was going to be a large pool of actuaries, mathematicians, and people with the skills we were looking for.
So initially, we were hiring this group to work on recruitment projects, performing basic tasks, and over the time, the variety of work and type of projects that are being offshored has significantly expanded. We started using this team for P & C. And now we use this team to work on Life projects. We started doing just basic tasks and now this team is taking on work that requires more experience.
So we have been evolving over the time. We moved the focus from-- we were just trying to make sure that the work that it was going to be transferred was being transferred to more strategic things like the skills that were being required not just at back then, but in the future, training requirements, recruitment processes, onboarding processes, retention strategies.
So I think the most valuable lessons we learned so far, in my opinion, are, number one, in this project deciding to go for nearshoring as any other strategic project has to be clearly sponsored by leadership. So it's a big change in the way we work. So initially, there's going to be a lot of resistance.
Number two, a big lesson, view the nearshoring team as part of the local team. So that's very important. And number three, you are not creating a team of highly qualified career analysts. You are creating a team of top performers with ambitions and very much interested in growing or in their professional development.
INNA KOGAN: Yes, it sounds like it was very challenging, clearly from the Mexico perspective. But what are the key challenges from the North American perspective to implement this model?
DUNCAN BRIGGS: Yeah, I can take that one, Inna. And I certainly don't want to say that it was plain sailing and easy. There definitely were challenges when we first implemented this model. As Marcela said, we started the group in 2015, which was before COVID. And back then, I would say the vast majority of people in the U.S. were working in office in groups. So the work that was getting done, was getting done in person by teams that were working together.
So we had to encourage them that, OK, we're going to change how that work is getting done. You're now going to be working with people who are remote. And that was a big change for people. And I think it took a lot of getting used to. And now in 2025, we look back on that and post COVID, and now everyone is very used to working remotely. I think it's a lot easier, but back then that was certainly a challenge. So getting used to having the work done by a team that was in a different place, that was challenge number one.
And then I think just generally people are resistant to change. I think part of human nature is, if something's working and you've always done it a certain way, why change it? So we were introducing a new operating model. We were changing the way that work was getting done. And there were certainly some resistance to that which we had to overcome. But we did, and after the first period of operation, we addressed the issues. And I think things started working very smoothly after that.
INNA KOGAN: I know team has grown substantially over the past decade, and I've seen it actually growing further since I joined WTW about four years ago. What have been the keys to the success?
MARCELA ABRAHAM: Well, let me take that one. I will start with the last phrase of my previous observation. So we have created a team of top performers that has been professionally growing within our business. So a positive side effect from this vision is a very low turnover rate we have experienced. We now have a significant group of people with experience, and that is why they are being able to take on more complex tasks.
We have people right after they finish college or with just a couple of years of experience, very young people with very different expectations and interests, especially compared to us. So you have to offer them the chance to do varied and interesting work to keep them excited and entertained. And another success factor, in my opinion, is that since we have a local consulting business, we have tried to keep our consulting and nearshoring business together.
This attachment to the consulting team provides them career opportunities. If they like this business, they can eventually become consultants and work either locally or internationally. They don't see themselves being part of a nearshoring team all their career. And also there is a positive and engaging energy that comes embedded with being part of a larger group. The larger the group becomes, the more engaged they get. Because you're working with people that are so much like you in so many ways. So you come to work not just to work, but also to have fun and socialize.
INNA KOGAN: Yeah, I agree with that. Duncan, I wonder what's your perspective of the benefits of our nearshoring team on our business in North America?
DUNCAN BRIGGS: I think we've certainly experienced there have been a number of benefits. Firstly, the team provides excess capacity. So when things are very busy in North America, we have another avenue to turn to, another means for getting work done, which is very, very helpful.
Another factor we've experienced is that we can often quite easily nearshore work that is fairly routine in nature and repetitive and what that has meant is that some of those tasks that have been nearshored have left the team in the U.S. more free to do higher-value adding work and focus more on client-facing activities. So that's certainly been a benefit as well.
And initially, we certainly started this team as internally-focused. So it was focused on doing work for the North American consultant. So the work that they were getting from clients, we were then using the team in Mexico City to do some of that work. What we're seeing increasingly now is that the team is working directly with some of our clients. And there's a lot of things we're working on at the moment where the team is either working directly with clients in the U.S. or a large portion of the client work that we're doing for North American clients is being done by the group in Mexico City.
And I think this-- and maybe I can give some examples of some of the things we've done. So we have one of the clients that we work with is a startup company that's writing annuities. And they're a true startup. They don't have an actuarial infrastructure. So what they've done since they've been getting going is they've outsourced all of the actuarial work to WTW.
And in order for us to make that a cost efficient exercise for them to do, we are heavily utilizing the team in Mexico to do much of that work. So that is an attractive solution to that company. They don't have to hire their own actuaries. We do everything for them, largely, again, using the team in Mexico.
Another company that we work for is much larger and more established, but part of their business is acquiring blocks of business. Now, when they acquire blocks of business, they don't necessarily want to increase their staffing to accommodate all of the financial reporting requirements for that new block of business. So we can offer as a solution, as an alternative to hiring more people, why don't you give the financial reporting for that new block to us? And again, we can do that efficiently using the nearshoring team. So that's another example.
And then the final one I'll provide is that we have some situations where analysts in the nearshoring team are working directly with our clients. And that can be useful for things like when the client has particularly busy times of year. Rather than staffing up to the peak of their workload, they can staff at a more moderate level. And then when they have the surge in demand, they can use our nearshoring resources to help meet that extra workload. So that's another example of how it's proved quite successful with clients.
INNA KOGAN: Are there any other challenges that companies face where outsourcing or nearshoring could help mitigate?
MARCELA ABRAHAM: Yes, I would add to what Duncan said. Companies would run off portfolios, run off business, or companies where you have a line of business which is not part of your core business. So you don't want to have your core team distracted, but at the end of the day, you have to comply with certain regulations.
Another case where nearshoring could be an interesting option is when doing a pilot or a proof of concept. This is extra or additional work, and you don't want to go and hire more people when you know you're going to use them just for a certain amount of time. So I guess in general terms, nearshoring is a great way to scale quickly, but also to leverage your capacity in a better way.
SHANKAR RAMAN: We believe that nearshoring is a very viable and often a very attractive alternative for getting work done. As both my colleagues, Marcela and Duncan have mentioned, it has a number of benefits both from an economic perspective as well as from a quality of work product perspective. But in addition to those there are a couple of other benefits that will be worth calling out.
One, nearshoring gives you access to specialized talent. In many cases that is not easily available in an outsourced location or even in your home country. It gives a way of addressing talent risks in developed markets that may be difficult for many companies to address on their own. The second tenet risk opportunity that nearshoring provides is from an economic perspective, many times, particularly in the volatile economic environment, it provides you a chance to protect yourself against currency fluctuations.
As in nearshoring, you're more likely to be in a situation where you're able to maintain your cost of work down effectively. As both Marcela and Duncan have said, nearshoring is an excellent alternative for getting work done. And the best part is this is not just transaction work, this is brain-based work that can be done by highly specialized talent in markets that are close to you.
INNA KOGAN: Great. There are certainly many benefits in outsourcing, co-sourcing, and nearshoring which companies could explore tapping and achieve advantages from financial and human capital perspectives. Thank you very much, Duncan.
DUNCAN BRIGGS: Thank you.
INNA KOGAN: Marcela, thank you.
MARCELA ABRAHAM: Thank you.
INNA KOGAN: And, Shankar.
SHANKAR RAMAN: Thank you very much. Been a pleasure. Hasta la vista.
INNA KOGAN: And to all our listeners, thank you for joining our Rethinking Insurance Podcast. Have a wonderful day.
NARRATOR: Thank you for joining us for this WTW podcast featuring the latest perspectives on the intersection of people, capital, and risk. For more information, visit the insight section of wtwco.com. This podcast is for general discussion and/or information only, is not intended to be relied upon and action based on or in connection with anything contained herein should not be taken without first obtaining specific advice from a suitably qualified professional.
