"Companies no longer choose locations based solely on cost. They choose places that can deliver resilience, capability and depth of talent." That is how outgoing IBPAP president and CEO Jack Madrid framed the launch of a new investor coalition on September 8 — the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines' most deliberate move yet to reduce the industry's dependence on the United States.
The coalition brings together advisory firms, property developers, banks, and investment promotion agencies behind a single campaign: convince global companies — especially global capability centers (GCCs, the in-house offshore units multinationals run instead of outsourcing) and mid-market firms — to locate or expand in the Philippines. Newsbytes.PH reported that the campaign targets Australia, Japan, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom, with a sector focus on banking, financial services, insurance, and healthcare.
Who is in the coalition, and what each member does
This is not a joint press release but a division of labor:
- Advisory firms commit to including the Philippines in the location recommendations they make to clients weighing where to put new operations.
- Property developers provide facilities and organize site visits for prospective locators.
- Banks open their international client networks to the campaign.
- Investment promotion agencies handle incentives and market entry for companies that commit.
The campaign will run through investor roadshows, executive briefings, and targeted business development in the four priority markets.
Why look beyond the United States
The US remains the dominant client base for Philippine IT and business process management (IT-BPM), which makes the industry exposed to a single economy's politics and pricing pressure. That exposure has sharpened this year on two fronts: tariff talk in Washington, and AI services that undercut human-delivered work — Microsoft's MAI-Transcribe 2, for example, prices AI transcription at $0.10 (around ₱6) an hour, a direct challenge to one of the sector's traditional service lines.
Courting Australia, Japan, the Middle East, and the UK is the structural hedge. Philstar.com's report adds that the coalition wants to position the country for higher-value operations — technology, finance and accounting, analytics, cybersecurity, engineering, and AI-enabled services — rather than purely cost-driven work. Alongside the new bets, the pitch leans on the sectors where the industry already leads: customer experience, healthcare information management, IT services, finance and accounting, and human resources services.
The 2028 target in context
The push is anchored to the industry roadmap's best-case 2028 projection: $50.5 billion (around ₱3.16 trillion) in annual revenue and 2.14 million direct jobs. The 2025 baseline was $40.3 billion (around ₱2.52 trillion) in revenue and about 1.9 million jobs — so the target requires adding roughly $10 billion in revenue and 240,000 jobs in three years, while the industry's biggest market wobbles and AI reprices its cheapest services.
What this means for Filipino BPO workers
IT-BPM is the country's largest private employer and one of its top dollar earners, so where the next wave of clients comes from is a job-security question for well over a million workers. Two things are worth watching. First, whether the new markets actually favor the higher-value roles IBPAP is pitching — GCC work in banking, insurance, and healthcare tends to pay better than voice services, but it also demands different skills. Second, whether diversification moves fast enough to matter: coalitions and roadshows take quarters to convert into signed locators, and the AI pricing pressure is already here. The direction is right; the clock is the risk.
