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Models
Captive center
Captive center is an office or legal entity that works only for its parent, not for multiple outside clients. In the Philippines it is how a foreign firm builds its own delivery site instead of renting a BPO floor.
Also called captive office
How it works
A captive needs an entity, a site or a structured WFH program, local leadership, and a headcount plan. You carry the Labor Code directly. You also keep the process knowledge. IBPAP’s world includes both multi-client BPO firms and captives / global capability centers. A captive makes sense when the work is core and the seat count will justify the entity. It is a poor fit for the first EA. People still say ‘captive’ when they mean ‘our two VAs in Manila.’ Two VAs are a team. They are not a center.
Example: a U.S. insurer stands up 80 claims staff in a PEZA IT park through its own subsidiary. That is a captive. A founder with one bookkeeper on an EOR is not running a captive and should not staff it like one.
How it differs
A GCC is the current label many firms prefer, with a stronger knowledge-work claim. BOT is a path to a captive. BPO is multi-client delivery.
Common errors
Using captive language to avoid calling the arrangement employment. Opening a coworking bay and telling BIR it is a branch without filings.
In practice
Treat Captive center as a week-one operating object. Name the employer on the contract and the manager in Slack. If those two names cannot both be true at once, the model is theater. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have captive center yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.