Fortune 500 company Cognizant, one of America’s leading business process and automation management companies, has expanded its operations in Vilnius and will provide services for Tryg, one of the largest insurance company in Scandinavia, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. As a result of new contract, Cognizant is about to employ more specialists and teach them Danish in less than six months.
The skills and attitude of the available talent in Lithuania was a decisive factor in Cognizant’s decision to expand its operations, explains Kaushik Sarkar the Head of Nordics and Baltics in Cognizant. “When we entered Lithuania we noticed that there’s another language that the employees here speak alongside the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish – they speak the language of business. Our European clients feel that they are with like-minded people when they work with our Lithuanian team. That’s why we see the service centre in Vilnius as a future global Cognizant star, one of the best in the group,” Mr. Sarkar points out.
The Vilnius delivery and operations centre offers services to companies in a range of sectors from pension funds through to insurance and banking. As the centre grows, other functions will be added and expanded. Relatively simple functions with low Scandinavian language dependency are moved to India, while more complex functions that require deeper knowledge and involve decision making, are delivered from Vilnius. This way Cognizant’s Vilnius centre will become a Nordic hub for finance and insurance business playing a central role in its global delivery model for clients.
After expansion Cognizant may become one of Lithuania’s largest global service centres. The company, which is currently 230th in the Fortune 500 list of America’s biggest businesses, will also become the largest provider of Scandinavian language education in Lithuania. The number of students enrolled at Cognizant’s language school is set to surpass those enrolled in other higher education institutions, which numbered 288 last year.
“Cognizant is the global leader in automation and robotics solutions for service centres. Consequently, its decision to expand in Lithuania is a strong step forward for Vilnius’ shared services cluster, both in terms of quantity and quality. It is another success story for both Lithuania and the company”, says Lithuania’s Minister for the Economy, Mindaugas Sinkevičius.
For Mantas Katinas, managing director of the foreign investment promotion agency Invest Lithuania, Cognizant’s decision to expand is important for more than just job creation. “The centre’s expansion, and its ambitious plans in Lithuania, represents a particularly important step in the development of service centres offering nearshoring services,” Mr Katinas states. “Together with new jobs, the company will also create improved competence in Scandinavian languages and the opportunity to gain experience in dealing with Scandinavian countries. As a result, these factors could encourage new investors from Scandinavia to set up operations in Lithuania”, concludes Mr Katinas.
Cognizant set up operations in Lithuania when it acquired the Storebrand service centre, which was established in Vilnius in 2007. Currently, the centre employs more than 580 specialists. Cognizant employs over 260,000 people globally.
