TransUnion has doubled down on its commitment to the African continent by announcing the opening of a new Global Capability Centre in South Africa to provide support to clients around the world, creating numerous new jobs in the process.
The new virtual centre, to be headed by veteran business process outsourcing (BPO) executive Avesh Singh, will support TransUnion’s global operations, and will see the company investing heavily in local talent as it builds out a full stack of capabilities across contact centre, business process management, technology support and data analytics roles.
TransUnion Africa CEO Lee Naik hailed the announcement as a major step forward for the company’s strategy of becoming a digital-first global organisation.
“The new centre is part of an inexorable shift towards a more flexible working model that utilises best-in-class talent pools around the world to enable innovation and deliver value, while enabling stronger communities and thriving economies. This is what the future looks like, and we’re not just talking it, we’re living it,” said Naik.
The new centre is part of a wider initiative which also sees TransUnion’s Global Capability Centre in Chennai, India, expand to the city of Pune. The Chennai centre, which launched in 2018, already employs more than 900 people.
Naik said Africa had a ‘powerful future narrative’, with more than 12 million Africans forecast to have tertiary education by 2030, and almost 60% of the continent’s population under the age of 25. “Together with recent advances in technology, the bottom line is that Africa is now able to lure multinationals to invest in the continent because we have the potential and the talent and capacity to fulfil it. Africa is open for business,” said Naik.
BPESA (Business Process Enabling South Africa), whose mission is to create a trading environment in the global business services sector in South Africa, welcomed the announcement.
“The South African global business services sector is dynamic and growing, and presents an opportunity for both economic stimulation and youth job creation. Having an international giant such as TransUnion, which services over one billion individual consumers in over 30 countries, choose South Africa as a strategic delivery destination speaks volumes for the quality of talent available to support the variety of services required. TransUnion is both harnessing the abundance of skilled youthful talent as well as a robust enabling environment by setting this new centre as a virtual work from home (WFH) opportunity,” said BPESA CEO Andy Searle.
