Our View of the World
We have spent 21 years building, managing, and fixing offshore analyst teams for banks and asset managers. This is what we have learned — about what works, what fails, and what determines whether an offshore model delivers or degrades.
Some of these articles explain how offshore research support works in practice. Others explore where judgement sits, what can and cannot be offshored, and why quality erodes when certain conditions are absent. A few diagnose the structural problems that most providers would prefer not to name.
If you are exploring offshore analyst support for the first time, start with the discipline closest to your team. If you already use an offshore provider and something feels wrong, start with our work on India-based analyst teams — that is where the structural analysis lives.
Equity Research Outsourcing
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How offshore analysts support equity coverage — from earnings model maintenance to initiation research — and where the model adds most value.
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Credit Research Outsourcing
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Credit research spans bonds, loans, and counterparty risk — each with different workflows and different failure modes. How offshore analysts support fundamental credit research, where judgement sits, how institutional memory builds or erodes, and what determines whether outsourced credit work holds up under scrutiny.
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M&A & Investment Banking Outsourcing
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Pitchbook production, comparable analysis, financial modelling, and post-mandate support. Where offshore models are established, and where they stall.
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India-Based Analyst Teams
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What determines whether offshore research models work or fail — including why quality degrades, what the retention data shows, and what happens when providers cannot answer the audit question.
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Dan Davies, MD, Frontline Analysts
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Dan Davies is Frontline's Senior Research Adviser, author of The Unaccountability Machine (FT Business Book of the Year shortlist 2024), author of the Substack Back of Mind and a regular contributor to the Financial Times. He writes on accountability, decision-making, and how financial systems actually work.