Broadridge, a US company that sells technology and communications solutions to the financial services industry, has seen its global capability centre (GCC) in Bengaluru rise in prominence. The centre is core to the company’s strategy, Jason Birmingham, the company’s global chief technology officer and head of global engineering, and Sheenam Ohrie, managing director of Broadridge India, tell Avik Das in an interview in Bengaluru. Edited excerpts:
How has the GCC evolved for Broadridge since you came on board more than six years ago?
Birmingham: I think back in 1999, it came to us through an acquisition. It was a traditional low-cost provider; operations and support player. In the past, we had struggled a bit to make this a preferred place to work. I think the leadership team that Sheenam has brought in has helped it become a destination for talent. As we thought about transformation and strategy from a technology perspective, the talent base in India became more crucial. We were not taking advantage of that at all earlier. We talked about agile squads and backlogs, and getting teams into a structure that allowed us to really invest in engineering, product management and business talent here.
Since the time we changed the operating model, we have plugged India directly into the strategy. The squads here are equally as capable as the ones in North America. They’re all working off the same backlog for a product. It is an integrated model unlike the earlier one when there were certain sets of work that teams in the US would do and certain sets for Indian counterparts.
How has your India team contributed in artificial intelligence?
Birmingham: If you just go up and down the trade life cycle, we’re using AI to enrich trades. Our bond trading is AI-enabled. Corporate bonds are great hedging vehicles for a lot of companies. We built a platform powered by AI to help suggest bond issuances that can help a company hedge its exposure. An operations professional — a large part of our post-trade customer base — is able to spot breaks before they happen and recommend how to avoid trade fails. Our Indian engineers have played key roles in the development of these products.
How has your employee demographic evolved during this transition period?
Ohrie: From a pure demographics perspective, we have doubled our engineering talent in India in the last three years. We have a talent base of 3,500 and a total headcount of 5,700, which represents about 40 per cent of the total Broadridge employee base.
We’ve also changed the way we hire. A lot of new engineering focus leaders are here. Our focus is to be an engineering organisation and not just a delivery one. Under Sheenam, we have brought in external leaders who have an outside view. We have also created a persona-based learning programme in India.
As many of your financial clients have their own GCCs in India, how do you plan to collaborate with them better?
Ohrie: Wells Fargo, Citibank, HSBC and Northern Trust — you name them and they have a large setup here. What we have discovered in the past 18 to 24 months is that we have leaders in India who have influence on the usage of our products. They have decision-making powers on whether they should buy from us or not. We launched what is called the local account management function, not really to sell, but to connect with our customers and see how we can help them leverage Broadridge better.
We are very deeply engaged with about eight clients right now and want to increase it to about 15 in the next 12 months. It is about penetrating the Broadridge products further in those companies.
How do you see this centre evolving in the age of AI?
Birmingham: We need talent with different skill sets flowing in. They should have the ability to break complex things down into doable tasks — the ability to collaborate differently, to partner with business people, with AI agents, like using those tools in an entirely different way. In essence, to create versus code. I think that is where a lot of this will end up going over the next five to 10 years. With technical skills, it will put the Indian market in a really well-positioned place to capitalise on that.
 "India well-positioned to capitalise on AI markets: Birmingham & Ohrie")
