KPMG corporate off-shoring: more than meets the eye

Written by: (Contributed) on 28 February, 2026

(Source: www.bacancytechnology.com)

The decision by a major Australian-based corporate financial organisation to place a major part of its business operations offshore, cannot be viewed as a simple cost-cutting measure; the savings are relatively minimal. Another Australian telecommunications organisation, likewise, has also decided to place some of its sensitive operations offshore. The decisions are best viewed along lines more in keeping with plausible denial and assessed as part of the US-led regional Cold War. It shows how influential Washington and Wall Street and the Pentagon are within the Australian corporate sector.

In early February, the Australian-based part of the global KPMG corporate financial organisation announced they were planning to place about 75 per cent of their operations offshore in the Philippines; only about 65 personnel will remain in Australia. (1) The stated reason for the decision included reference to 'from a hunt for cheaper labour to a scramble to find any talent at all … their predominant reason for off-shoring was access to a much larger talent pool'. (2) It was couched in condescending terminology.

As KPMG Australia recorded the total revenue for the two past financial years on their official websites as: FY24 – A$2.386 billion, FY 25 – A$2.315 billion; the stated reason for the organisation off-shoring nearly two hundred executive assistants, to save about A$15 million, would appear ridiculous and more in line with a convenient cover for other non-stated reasons. (3) KPMG, moreover, emerged from US-led moves for globalisation; the corporate sector has a long history as a cover for US extra-curricula activities.

References to KPMG developing a business model which will include Australian-based managerial staff 'directly managing their off-shore employees', for example, can be interpreted in a number of different ways. (4) The KPMG organisation has been troubled with a number of scandals in recent years and would appear keen to distance itself from further unfavourable publicity. (5) Off-shoring operations, may or may not, solve issues.

While it was openly accepted that Australian KPMG executive assistant personnel averaged about A$87,000 pa, whereas their Philippine counterparts will receive only A$10,000 pa, there would appear other factors in play. The Philippines, in recent times, for example, has become an important financial hub; over 24 per cent of the country's GDP originates from the financial sector. (6) The financial platforms are a conduit into ASEAN and elsewhere.

A closer study of the role of the Philippines, however, has revealed its continued importance and significance for US foreign policy from the previous Cold War to the present one with China. In recent years the US has pushed the country into a front-line diplomatic position against China, with regular confrontations taking place in the South China Seas. The US has access to nine military facilities in the Philippines, and an unspecified number of intelligence-gathering facilities which operate at all levels.

The Philippines, with its central and strategic position in the region, was used in the previous Cold War by the US used for regional operations. The patronage was lavish: during the 1946-1975 period the US trained 15,245 Philippine military personnel and provided presidential administrations in Manila with US$805,800,000 of military aid for defence and security provision for 'US interests'. (7)

Washington and the Pentagon turned a blind eye to the ensuing and rampant corruption they patronised; the Marcos family, for example, are generally accredited with appropriating an estimated US$10 billion from institutionalised corruption. (8) Agents were cheap to buy.

Little changed with the removal of the first Marcos presidential administration in 1986, and its successor four decades later. Recent studies of the Philippines reveal the country being ranked at 114th from a total of 180 countries for corrupt working practices. (9)

While used as a financial hub for the ASEAN countries, the Philippines is also ranked lower than most member and associate countries for corruption problems; only Cambodia and Myanmar have worse placements. (10) It does not, however, cause the US undue problems; in fact, they appear quite happy with the present Marcos presidential administration which continues to serve 'US interests' at their every beck and call. Corruption, furthermore, serves as an effective means of control by the US, over its subject countries and political puppets.

The KPMG decisions have also been accompanied by similar ones with Telstra, which handles vast troves of personal data from its telecommunications business. Their decision to off-shore sensitive positions to India and reduce its Australian workforce by 650 positions, as a supposed cost-cutting measure, has also raised similar questions. (11)

The main question includes accountability: Australia has a well-regulated economy with relatively efficient cyber-security provision and the monitoring of indiscriminate AI usage to safeguard vast troves of personal data from unwanted profiling; other countries, notably the Philippines and India, have highly de-regulated economies marked by little cyber-security provision. Australians, not by coincidence, are also continually targeted by state and non-state cyber-security scams and actors from elsewhere in Asia. The problem has reached epidemic proportions; intelligence-gathering is the name of the game. Regulations, for shadowy cyber figures, however, remain an obstacle. And one they seek to circumvent.

And, the KPMG proposed business model, interestingly, will include Philippine-based 'cyber-security, security operations centre engineering, and specialists who could navigate enterprise platforms', working under those based in Australia. (12) A coincidence? The Telstra decision, likewise, has also included reference to the telco gaining access to opportunities with India-based AI specialist bodies so, 'we can tap into their AI capabilities to simply enable our tools and services to help us mover faster and operate more efficiently'. (13)

The motives used by Australian-based businesses to off-shore part operations should be subject to greater scrutiny by Canberra; would it be unreasonable to suggest they have merely placed their intelligence-gathering facilities outside the reach of law enforcement agencies to where there is no real accountability? When considering the uses and abuses of power, it is not what they do, which is the fundamental question, but how they do it!

And, interestingly, declassified documentation from the previous Cold War defines plausible denial as being used to protect clandestine operations, 'planned and executed under the sponsorship of Government departments or agencies in such a way as to assure secrecy or concealment of the operation and its sponsor'. (14) From one Cold War to the next?

1. Why your next colleague will be in Manila, Australian, 10 February 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. KPMG Australia planning to off-shore 200 roles to the Philippines, Sky News, 4 February 2026.
4. Australian, op.cit., 10 February 2026.
5. See: Wikipedia – KPMG.
6. Why is Manila considered a financial hub for traders? Admin., 25 July 2025.
7. The Sun and its Planets, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, (Boston, 1979), Diagram, Inside Cover.
8. 'The $10 bn question', The Guardian, 21 January 2024.
9. The Philippines – 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index.
10. Philippines ranks, GMA., 10 February 2026.
11. Telstra to cut 650 jobs in overhaul, Australian, 12 February 2026.
12. Australian, op.cit., 10 February 2026.
13. Australian, op.cit., 12 February 2026.
14. Instructions for the co-ordination and control of the Navy's clandestine intelligence collection program, Secretary of the Navy, Washington, 7 December 1965, Declassified: 13 July 1990.