This Big 4 Service Delivery Centre quietly fired 300+ staff

• India has been the darling of Global Capability Centres (GCC), boosting demand for tech, accounting, finance, and tax professionals to serve the UK, Australia, and the US.  
• Big 4s jumped in, hiring CAs and CPAs in droves.
• Cut to 2024…

What is happening?

In July -August 2024 there was a deluge of CVs in the market from those working in the Big 4s delivery centres.

But this one particular Big 4 Service Delivery Centre has caught everyone’s attention – As approximately 250+ people have been forced to resign or faced with stalled promotions, leading them to resign voluntarily.

Some insiders report that the actual number could be much higher!

Employees with 2-5 years of experience are the hardest hit, and mind you, all of them are CAs or CPAs!

What could be the reasons?

Upon speaking with a few employees at this Big 4 Service Delivery Centre they mentioned that companies in the US and Canada are experiencing poor performance.

At this Big 4 Service Delivery Centre, a significant number of employees, ranging from 200+, were assigned to handle assurance assignments for Canadian companies. However, a lack of work led to many employees being on the bench for 2-3 months.

Then, as expected hundreds of employees mostly from the Canada Assurance team in India, were forced to resign or had their employment terminated, citing various reasons.

Opportunities for freshers are sad?

One insider stated,

“This is inhuman behaviour. I have heard of situations where instead of showing sympathy, they told the person to put the papers down within 10 minutes or they would face termination.

I might be next in the queue, don’t know.”

Another person added,

“You would think that this Big 4 Service Delivery Centre is laying off only subpar employees.

But the truth is, they are firing employees even with Tier 1 ratings.

Not at all justified.”

These organisations will lose trust in the long run.

On the other hand…

Outsourcing firms 

Indian outsourcing firms with a focus on Accounting and Tax services are finding it difficult to acquire and retain talent.

Uday Ranpara, Director at Unison Globus and Initor Global which provides accounting, audit, and tax outsourcing services to the North American, Australian, New Zealand, and Singapore markets shared some different perspectives.

“We were discussing that even if we increase our headcount from 500 to 5,000, we would still not cover even 1% of the existing outsourcing work.

In India right now, there’s an abundance of work available, from the US, UK, and other countries. The main challenge is finding talented professionals.

CPA firms are increasingly coming directly to India and establishing their captive units here. For instance: Armanino, a US CPA Firm with over USD 700 Mn in revenue started a satellite office in India.

They have deep pockets and private equity money and can attract talent very easily. That’s why a majority of the outsourcing companies are facing this issue.”

Kavita Chakraborty, Founder of Konnect Books and Taxes echoed the same.

Bias against employees working in the offshore industry

We understand the economy is tight and in the current world there is nothing known as a ‘job guarantee of job security’

However, the BIG concern here is hiring 100s of qualified CAs, CPAs who worked so hard to acquire these qualifications and then ‘forcing them to resign’

Anurag Singal, Head of Valuations & Compliance at BetaFin Partners and Chief Mentor at cajobportal stated in a LinkedIn post-

Many CAs previously employed in US-focused Centers of Excellence, specializing in areas such as Audit and Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A), are now, jobless.

They are flooding the job market with their resumes that are labelled as ‘Offshore CVs’. They will not be considered by those mainstream companies, due to preconceived notions and biases.

This raises the question: What next for these professionals with ‘Offshore CVs’?

CA Final Results are out…

CA Final results for May 2024 are released.

This year we have 20,446 freshly qualified certified Chartered Accountants.

Will the cycle continue?

What is your take? Why the hush-hush firing disguised as resignations?