The banking group Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne is preparing to relocate part of its IT activities to Portugal, in Porto. The inter-union talks about the transfer of 12 departments of BPCE-IT.
Following the example of various players in the banking industry, such as BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, the French banking institution Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne is preparing to relocate part of its IT activities to Portugal. According to a document communicated by the company’s inter-union, this project will result in the complete transfer of 12 BPCE-IT departments to Porto, directly affecting 58 employees. In addition, the work in hybrid mode (France/Portugal) concerning 47 other services will directly or indirectly affect all employees. As a consequence, the BPCE-IT staff representatives of the CGT, CFDT, CFTC, Sud, SNB and Unsa federations called on the banking group’s employees to go on strike on January 17. The union organizations mention 450 people mobilized. In a leaflet, they made it known that they were firmly opposed to the relocation and outsourcing of BPCE-IT activities presented to the Works Council as part of the DragonFly project.
For the inter-union, “the BPCE group is now transferring part of its activities abroad while reducing its workforce in France, that is to say 379 fewer service providers and 25 voluntary departures. We cannot accept that today it is essential to transfer part of our activity to a foreign structure to finance our transformation. When contacted, BPCE’s communications department told us: “BPCE already has teams in Porto, Portugal. This project is therefore consistent with the deployment strategy of our IT businesses. Moreover, we plan to invest 25 million euros in recruitment and training over three years via this project. In addition, as part of this development plan, 70 positions will also be created internally in France.”
A strategy initiated in 2016 at Natixis
Several years ago, Natixis, the financing, management and financial services bank of the BPCE group, embarked on a vast nearshoring plan by relocating a large part of its IT activities to Portugal. Between 2016 and the end of 2019, the number of external service providers was to be reduced from 1,893 to 993. The aim of this reduction in the use of external services was to reduce the cost of outsourcing and to move closer to the outsourcing strategies in force in other banking groups
