Nearly all CIOs today are under pressure to contain costs; in fact, many are being asking to cut IT budgets by 20%. But the challenges of dealing with the recession have not gone away, even if the budget has. Banks take a long-term view of such initiatives allocate budgets accordingly and monitor these IT projects very judiciously.
Priority of Strategic Initiatives in IT
Most Banks are planning for IT initiatives that contribute significantly to strategic positioning of services and cost reduction. Common trends were noticed across segments with respect to prioritization of IT initiatives and implementation timelines.
It had been estimated that globally, emergence of new technologies such as back office virtualization, cloud computing and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) will reduce absolute spending on IT.
Key IT Solutions
As part of implementation of strategic IT initiatives, Banks are deploying IT solutions to facilitate automation in transaction management, reporting and risk management. Business Intelligence and analytics initiatives are planned in the near term by Public Banks and in a two to three year window by Private Banks. The deployment of new technologies is gaining momentum, which has the potential to bring far reaching impact in the Banking industry as a whole.
Process Improvement Models
ISO 27001 seems to be the most actively adopted standard across the banking sector. A large fraction of the private sector banks, are actively adopting process improvement initiatives in line with Six Sigma, which indicates a growing focus on enhancing operational efficiencies.
Risk Management
Focus on reporting of risk and compliance has increased significantly in line with global as well as regional trends. Automated systems can help a proactive risk management approach, while reducing compliance costs. Banks have shown a fair interest in upgrading