What to check before hiring an outsourcing provider in Peru

Global procurement processes are good at assessing a vendor’s price, financial strength, information security and anti-corruption controls. They are rarely designed to answer the question that matters most under Peruvian labor law: will this provider’s workers remain its employees, or could they become ours? When the answer is uncertain, the client takes on two kinds of exposure: recharacterization of the arrangement, and joint liability for the contractor’s unpaid obligations.

This article offers a practical checklist for groups selecting an outsourcing provider in Peru, whether through a local tender or by extending a regional or global framework to the Peruvian entity. It complements our overview of outsourcing and staffing in Peru.

Step one: confirm which regime applies

Before any document is requested, the client should decide what it is actually buying. Peru has two distinct regimes:

• Outsourcing (tercerización, Law 29245): the provider delivers a complete service or project autonomously and directs its own workers.
• Labor intermediation (intermediación laboral, Law 27626): a staffing agency places workers who are directed by the client, only for temporary, complementary or highly specialized needs.

The checklist differs depending on the answer, and so does the contract. If client managers will direct the workers day to day, the arrangement is intermediation, whatever the vendor calls it. The distinction is explained in outsourcing vs. staffing agencies in Peru.

Step two: test the provider’s autonomy

Law 29245 requires the contractor to act at its own account and risk, with its own financial, technical or material resources, to be responsible for results and to keep its workers under its exclusive subordination. The characteristic indicators include plurality of clients, own equipment, capital investment and payment by work or service. The requirements are covered in depth in outsourcing requirements under Peruvian law.

In a due diligence, those abstract requirements translate into concrete questions:

• Does the provider have other clients in Peru, or was the local entity set up only to serve this contract? (Plurality of clients is not required in every case, for example during a contractor’s first year of activity.)
• What equipment, tools, systems and methodologies will it bring?
• Does it have supervisors or coordinators who will direct the workers on site or remotely?
• Is its proposal priced by deliverable, or by headcount and hours?
• Does it have the capital and insurance to bear the risk of the service?

Step three: verify registrations and labor compliance

Registration

Contractors that work with continuous displacement of staff to the client must register in the national registry of outsourcing companies kept by the labor authority, under article 8 of Law 29245. Supreme Decree 001-2022-TR, which had prohibited outsourcing core business activities, was declared null by the Supreme Court in a popular action; because the precise registry procedure after that ruling should be confirmed, the client should verify the provider’s current registration status at the time of contracting. For staffing agencies, the relevant registry is the RENEEIL.

Payroll and social security

Because of joint liability, the client has a direct interest in the contractor’s compliance with statutory payments for the displaced workers, including:

• Registration of the workers in the contractor’s payroll.
• Payment of wages at or above the legal minimum, currently S/ 1,130 per month (an increase has been announced but requires a supreme decree).
• Gratificaciones, the two statutory bonuses paid in July and December.
• CTS, a severance fund the employer deposits twice a year into a bank account in the worker’s name.
• EsSalud, the public health insurance funded by an employer contribution, and pension contributions.

Health and safety

Under article 27.16 of Supreme Decree 019-2006-TR, failing to verify that contractors comply with health and safety rules is a serious infringement for the client. The due diligence should therefore cover the contractor’s health and safety management system, risk assessments, training records and, for high-risk activities, SCTR, the supplementary occupational-risk insurance required for exposed workers.

If the provider is a staffing agency

Where step one shows that the arrangement is labor intermediation rather than outsourcing, the checks follow Law 27626 instead:

• The agency is a legal entity with an exclusive corporate purpose as a service company, registered in the RENEEIL.
• It has posted the bond (fianza) that guarantees its workers’ labor and social security entitlements. If the bond proves insufficient, the client is jointly liable under article 25 of the law.
• The need falls within one of the permitted cases: temporary, complementary or highly specialized. Agency workers cannot cover permanent core activities or replace workers on strike.
• Temporary placements, added to any existing ones, stay within 20% of the client’s total workforce.
• For temporary placements, the agency applies the pay and conditions the client grants its own employees, as the law requires.

Step four: build the contract around the law

Illustrative scenario

Step five: monitor during the contract

Most problems appear after signature. A light but regular monitoring routine is more effective than an exhaustive one-off check:

• Collect payment evidence on a fixed schedule and follow up on gaps.
• Check that the contractor’s supervisor is actually present and directing the work.
• Review, at least annually, whether client managers are giving direct instructions to contractor staff.
• Reassess the arrangement whenever the scope, headcount or location changes.
• Keep records for at least one year after the displacement ends, the period during which joint liability can still be invoked.

The signals that an arrangement is drifting are described in when outsourcing is recharacterized in Peru.

Common mistakes

• Relying on global onboarding alone.
• Selecting on price per head, then being surprised that the arrangement looks like a supply of personnel.
• Collecting payroll evidence at signing and never again.
• Treating the contractor’s indemnity as a substitute for due diligence.
• Forgetting existing vendors: the checklist applies equally to renewals and to contracts inherited through acquisitions. For the transaction context, see employment due diligence in Peruvian transactions.

Consequences of skipping the checks

If the provider lacks real autonomy, the outsourcing can be recharacterized and the workers treated as the client’s direct, indefinite-term employees. If the provider fails to pay its workers, the client can be held jointly liable during the displacement and for one year after. SUNAFIL can also impose fines within the statutory caps of Law 28806, which are expressed in UIT (the tax reference unit, S/ 5,500 in 2026).

How we can help

Our outsourcing and staffing practice prepares Peruvian due diligence modules for global procurement processes, reviews vendor contracts and designs monitoring routines that finance and operations can maintain.

Final checklist

• Regime confirmed: outsourcing or staffing agency.
• Autonomy indicators documented.
• Registration verified at contracting.
• Payroll, contributions and benefits evidenced for displaced workers.
• Health and safety management and, where relevant, SCTR confirmed.
• Contract priced by deliverables, with a contractor supervisor, audit rights and evidence obligations.
• Monitoring schedule assigned to a named owner.