Whilst the pandemic has stunted recent growth in the industry, the increasing drive towards cloud computing and digitalisation is opening up many new market opportunities for operators, with the market size for 2021 rising to £129.5 billion from £114.2 billion the previous year.

Many companies’ pre-existing IT infrastructure was not designed to handle the shift to remote working, resulting in increased demand for new IT infrastructure and digital development services.

In this report, Carl Lundberg, Gerald Edelman’s Partner, Transaction Services and Jack Bettell, Manager in the Gerald Edelman Deal Advisory team provide an overview of the industry’s recent performance, market trends, and key factors that will drive growth within the sector and maintain the strong M&A activity.

Key takeaways from the report are:

• The BPO industry exhibits a low level of market share concentration. In 2020, the top four players in the industry accounted for less than 20% of industry revenue. Capita PLC is the largest player operating in the industry, with a market share of 13.7%.
• Research in this report has shown 50+ deals completed in the UK BPO industry in the past 18 months, and over 25 of these were in 2021. Deal data highlights that many of the deals involved industry-specific firms and large players acquiring smaller BPO firms to bring specialist knowledge in-house.
• Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental effect to the UK economy and many industries, the IT services industry has managed to sustain growth and some areas have even thrived. With continued investment into transformational digital technologies and cloud computing, this growth is expected to surge over the next five years, with many new opportunities becoming available for IT services operators.