Predicting which Nearshore Americas’ stories will gain the strongest audience engagement on web pages is more art than science. Of course, classic interest areas – such as technology disruption, political upheaval, and country-focused analysis – always are top-performing categories. But looking back at our Top Ten stories of 2024, we find that some of the most fundamental components of the Nearshore business model gained the most traction. From currency risk to the cost of real estate, from mergers and acquisitions to legal battles over wages, we once again recognize that many distinct features of this industry continue to make for compelling reporting.
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Colombian Peso Begins to Drop After Months of High Flight
After a 15% appreciation against the US dollar in late 2023 and earlier this year, the Colombian peso faced a sharp downturn by April. This decline, particularly evident over a 10-day period earlier this year, saw the peso lose more than 5% of its value.
The drop was driven by several factors, including concerns over Colombia’s growing fiscal deficit, projected to rise to 5.3% of GDP, up from 4.3% in 2023. Analysts also pointed to the potential economic impact of proposed pension system reforms and the central bank’s plans to cut interest rates were further fueling uncertainty. Additionally, with global oil prices falling, Colombia’s oil-dependent economy faced increasing challenges, contributing to the peso’s then-projected struggles as the year ended.
Reviewing our year, the article seems to signal a particular pivot moment. Relatively soft variations registered afterward. But, starting in early June, the combination of the US election climate and internal credibility fall-offs sent the peso down and made dollars soar to heights unknown since October 2023.
Back to square one!
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Allegations that AgileThought Burned Scores of Mexico Developers
AgileThought, a Nearshore IT services firm, faced many challenges in late 2023. Its financial viability, the legality of its operations, and its reputation were at stake. This situation led to a restructured and renamed organization last October.
This is what happened:
The company primarily employed workers in Mexico. Their clients included high-profile banking and consulting firms like Santander and PwC.
Economic tensions felt through 2023 forced the firm to let loads of people go. Shortly afterward, former employees took to social media and made accusations around unpaid wages, severance pay, and absent profit sharing. It reached the point in which there was an active and growing LinkedIn group dedicated to sharing personal issues. In turn, the company responded and publicly pressed users to erase social media mentions.
At the same time, AgileThought navigated the process of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to renegotiate its debt, while also facing scrutiny from Mexican tax authorities over questionable tax filings and alleged unpaid taxes. The company, which had merged with several other entities over the years, more than struggled with mounting financial strains. It even ended up loading tax responsibilities onto employees because of wrongful usage of the Mexican tax platform.
By the end of 2023, AgileThought’s stock was delisted from Nasdaq, and its assets were sold to a creditor, Blue Torch Capital. Despite these efforts, the company’s morale and reputation remained tarnished, with former employees describing a toxic work environment and deteriorating mental health among staff.
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AI Hammers TP and Concentrix Stock as FOBO Becomes Very Real
Teleperformance and Concentrix, two of the top call center operators worldwide, took a heavy stock price fall. It was caused by Swedish fintech Klarna’s announcement they had replaced 700 customer experience specialists (CX) with AI.
Teleperformance was the most affected, losing nearly 60% of its stock price in two months. Meanwhile, Concentrix took a 40% hit. According to experts, the trend affected all shares in the CX market.
This event went down as a pivot that divided the approach to AI from BPO centers in two:
On the one hand, despite the stock deflating, Teleperformance’s CFO Olivier Rigaudy and CEO Daniel Julien commented with optimism on AI. Both noted how they believed it was better deployed as a complementary tool for humans, and how it would create new demand for other roles such as content moderation. Meanwhile, Klarna doubled down by sharing details of its experience: OpenAI chatbots had managed 2/3 of their customer service workflow and significantly reduced customers’ needs to repeat questions.
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These are Latin America’s Most Expensive Neighborhoods
Properati compared the average price per square meter for homes in 26 cities to describe the market for high-profile living in Latin America. A key finding of this research was that 75% of the neighborhoods on the list saw a decrease in average price per square meter compared to 2021.
Puerto Madero in Argentina, Del Valle in Mexico, and Ipanema in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, remained the most luxurious. The rest of the top 10 includes Vitacura in Santiago (Chile), Carrasco in Montevideo (Uruguay), Vila Nova Conceição in São Paulo (Brazil), Tablada Park in Córdoba (Argentina), Savassi in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), Puerta de Hierro in Guadalajara (Mexico) and Bosque de las Lomas in Mexico City.
Read more (and detail prices per city) here.
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Finally, Teleperformance Becomes Full Owner of Majorel
Earlier this year, French BPO giant Teleperformance acquired 99% of Majorel, a major call center operator founded in 2019. At the time of acquisition, the company boasted over 80,000 agents and annual revenue of approximately US$2.3 billion. In exchange, partner conglomerates Bertelsmann and Saham acquired 4% of Teleperformance’s shares,
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Digicel’s Big Boss Says No 5G for the Caribbean
Digicel CEO Denis O’Brien gave the hard news to the Caribbean early this year: neither his nor other telecom companies wanted to invest in installing 5G in the region. After a 4G deployment process that left many companies and governments deep in debt, neither party wanted to move forward and invest in the operation.
The connectivity matrix evolution was seen by locals as a key step to “leveling the field”. Service providers have been doing fine with 4G connections. Even in WFH setups, which aren’t that common in the Caribbean anyway, a 4G or even 3G connection works fine because many home users rely mostly on mobile networks. 5G isn’t currently a must for Caribbean nations and businesses operating regionally, but they will want to jump in soon; certainly before the technology is years into being a market standard.
However, as the year advanced, multiple 5G networks were deployed in the region. Different companies, including Digicel. worked hard and had gone from securing 5G presence in 5 countries by the beginning of the year to 16 in June.
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Itel to Scale Up in Jamaica After Locking Two Key Contracts
Throughout the year, Jamaica was one of the countries we talked about most, as the Caribbean nation showed solid steps to create environments more suited for nearshoring tech services.
Itel’s scaling up was partly reflective of this trend. Jamaica also landed a logistics company investors and a major US retailer as a boost for delivery centers in Kingston and Montego Bay
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Breakdowns: Accenture’s Canadian Controversy
Canadian authorities were grilled over a sole-source CAD$208 million (US$155 million) outsourcing contract with tech firm Accenture. The firm was hired to administer the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA). The Globe and Mail reported that about a third of the workers involved in the agreement with the government were sourced from Brazil.
The company had previously stated that practically all employees were Canadian. The finding of the contract generated public questioning over the administration’s compliance with active outsourcing legislation.
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India’s BPOs turn AI from “Job killer” to Job Generator
Earlier this month we reported how KR Vishwanathan, then Vice President of NASSCOM, stated “Machines are poised to take over 20% of BPO roles, but the same technology could create 40% more jobs in other domains.”
Nine months later, the prophecy showed some promise: with AI taking over repetitive tasks, business evolved into offering more data analyses, language model development, and other high-skilled assignments.
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Prices Drop and Supply Surges for Housing in Argentina Months After Rent Control Repeal
In December 2023, President Javier Milei repealed Argentina’s rent control law, leading to a surge in rental property supply by 211.9% and a 26.6% drop in prices. This change gave both tenants and property owners more flexibility in contract terms. By June 2024, rental availability had more than doubled, though prices fell overall, with Buenos Aires seeing a 163.7% rise in rents.
Despite the decrease in prices, renting remains costly: a single adult in Buenos Aires needs 675,960 pesos (US$712) monthly, and a family of four requires 1,564,836 pesos (US$1,649), contributing to high inflation.
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