Key Benefits of Nearshoring to Latin America for the Midmarket

For most midmarket companies, the problem isn’t strategy. It’s having the capacity to execute — and the gap is growing.

Amid rising cost pressure, talent shortages and transformation demands, more midmarket organizations are turning to the benefits of nearshoring to Latin America to improve performance, modernize faster and build more scalable operating models.

At Auxis Grant Thornton’s recent webcast, The Power of Nearshore Outsourcing for the Midmarket, more than 700 business leaders registered to learn why nearshoring adoption continues to accelerate in the midmarket — with 44% now operating or evaluating nearshore solutions, Grant Thornton’s 2026 Q2 CFO survey found.

“For organizations looking to outsource, reducing costs is table stakes,” said Keith Sayewitz, Auxis Grant Thornton Partner, Business and Finance Transformation & BPO. “Nearshoring is resonating with the midmarket because it delivers value beyond cost — combining 30% to 50% labor arbitrage with closer collaboration, greater alignment, access to highly skilled talent and the agility organizations need to accelerate modernization and growth.”

Cost, talent and AI pressures are colliding

Today’s challenging economic environment is placing greater demands across operational and back office functions, from finance and IT to HR and customer support.

According to Grant Thornton’s Q2 CFO survey:

• As optimism about the U.S. economy hit a record survey low, 87% of finance leaders are prioritizing cost-cutting — up from 72% the previous quarter.
• Only 48% of organizations are confident in their ability to meet their labor needs.
• 67% are increasing investment in technology and digital transformation.
• 42% expect M&A growth within their organizations, but integration challenges (53%), talent/leadership gaps (29%) and overestimated synergies (29%) remain major barriers to value creation.

Collectively, these trends spotlight a growing disconnect between business priorities and organizations’ ability to deliver tangible outcomes.

In the midmarket, these pressures are particularly acute. While large enterprises often have the resources to build specialized capabilities and centers of excellence internally, midmarket companies are expected to achieve the same growth objectives with leaner teams and tighter budgets.

“The priorities are clear: reduce costs, modernize operations and accelerate AI,” said Jose Alvarez, Auxis Grant Thornton Partner, IT Modernization & ITO. “In the midmarket, the challenge is accomplishing all three with lean teams. Nearshoring gives organizations the operational capacity and expertise to achieve these targets while keeping internal teams focused on strategic work.”

Why is nearshoring gaining momentum in the midmarket?

While outsourcing was once largely the domain of large enterprises with the scale to realize significant savings, it is rapidly gaining momentum among midmarket companies seeking enterprise-grade capabilities without the investment required to build them internally.

Only 34% of CFOs now rank cost reduction as the primary benefit of outsourcing — while 66% prioritize more strategic outcomes such as access to talent, AI enablement and scalability/process standardization, according to Grant Thornton’s Q1 CFO survey.

The rise of Latin America outsourcing is accelerating this shift — reducing many of the collaboration and management barriers that once made outsourcing feel challenging for midmarket teams. With limited bandwidth and smaller initiatives, midmarket organizations often require the flexibility, customization, responsiveness and speed of execution that nearshore providers can offer.

The region is also delivering results. Latin America reports the highest shared services satisfaction levels globally at 87%, outperforming North America (69%), Europe (64%) and Asia (53%), according to the State of the GBS and Outsourcing Industry in Latin America report by the Shared Services and Outsourcing Network (SSON) and Auxis Grant Thornton.

North America is the No. 1 market served, supported by 84% of Latin American shared services — reflecting the region’s maturity as a delivery hub for U.S. organizations, the SSON and Auxis Grant Thornton research found.

Latin America emerges as a capability hub

Latin America’s strengths align closely with the criteria organizations now use when selecting outsourcing locations, which include the ability to support complex work (96%), skilled talent availability (93%), cultural fit (67%) and time zone alignment (61%), according to Grant Thornton’s Q1 2026 CFO survey.

These factors can provide meaningful advantages as organizations increasingly look to outsource more judgment-intensive, time-sensitive or high-touch work. That can include customer interactions and end-to-end accounting in finance, AI enablement and cybersecurity in IT, Level 2 HR help desk, healthcare revenue cycle management and more.

“What we’re seeing is that organizations — even large enterprises — often struggle to execute more complex processes in traditional offshore models,” Sayewitz said. “It’s not because Asia lacks talent — the challenge is collaboration. As work becomes more complex and transformation-oriented, companies increasingly want resources operating in similar time zones that can function as a seamless extension of their team.”

That’s driving a trend toward hybrid delivery models, where complex work is performed nearshore while high-volume transactional processes continue to be delivered from Asia to maximize savings and outcomes, Sayewitz said. Sixty-five percent of organizations evaluating Latin America are looking to complement existing operations in Asia or Europe to diversify risk or support more complex process delivery, the SSON and Auxis Grant Thornton report found.

Funding AI through nearshoring

Increasingly, organizations are also viewing nearshoring benefits as a catalyst for modernization. Cost and transformation are no longer competing priorities as pressure mounts to reduce overhead and accelerate AI initiatives simultaneously.

Midmarket companies often lack the budget, technology expertise and governance framework to rapidly execute an effective AI program. Rather than viewing outsourcing and AI as separate initiatives, webcast speakers encouraged midmarket leaders to combine them into a single business case.

In this “Operate to Transform” model, labor arbitrage and efficiencies generated through outsourcing help fund AI without a new capital investment, while the technology is embedded into operations tied to measurable business outcomes.

“Nearshoring makes an ‘Operate to Transform’ approach more powerful,” Alvarez said. “With more than 90% of AI initiatives falling short of expectations, nearshoring offers the specialized talent, governance, close collaboration and accountability needed to reduce execution risk.”

The midmarket requires a different outsourcing model

For many midmarket organizations, the conversation is no longer whether to outsource, but how to build an operating model that can support long-term growth.

The midmarket requires a different approach than traditional enterprise outsourcing was designed to deliver — providing the flexibility to start with focused initiatives, adapt as priorities evolve, tailor solutions to unique business needs and combine operational execution with technology expertise, strategic advisory and close collaboration.

“The midmarket doesn’t need to operate like a Fortune 500 company to compete with one,” said Fabiana Corredor, Auxis Grant Thornton Vice President of Business Modernization and Nearshoring. “Success isn’t about building every capability in-house. It’s about focusing internal resources on the capabilities that truly differentiate the business while leveraging specialized expertise to accelerate execution, drive efficiency and create greater value.”

Other topics addressed during the midmarket nearshoring webcast include:

• Talent availability and which processes to consider across finance, IT, HR, customer support and other business operations
• Pros and cons of the top nearshoring markets, including Costa Rica, Colombia, and Mexico
• Build vs. buy: operating a captive vs. outsourcing
• Key lessons learned for the midmarket

For the full story on the power of nearshoring to Latin America for the midmarket, watch the on-demand webcast.