The Cross-Sectoral Playing Field in Outsourcing

Comparison and analysis of the various financial subsector's outsourcing regulations.
Peter Laaper Regulation of outsourcing in the financial sector has been in place as from around the year 2000. The various outsourcing regulations that have emerged since were often incomplete and largely inconsistent, resulting in a ‘hodgepodge’ of sectoral divergences. These regulations are still in full development. Gaps are being filled, often inspired, at least apparently, by solutions from other sectors’ outsourcing regulations. New aspects of outsourcing are being covered, too, resulting in ever-growing legal texts. Yet differences remain and whenever a financial sector’s regulatory framework is amended, these modifications never adopt all regulatory solutions from other sectors. As a result, despite all efforts to bridge these gaps, the various outsourcing regulations are still inconsistent from a cross-sectoral point of view. Even the concept of ‘outsourcing’ is not uniformly defined. In fact, the term is not even defined in most sectoral regulations. Even more, in some sectoral regulations, not even...