The majority of banks and insurers expect their IT budgets to rise in 2024 

PAC conducted the 2023 edition of its annual CxO Investment Priorities Survey, interviewing IT decision-makers in banks and insurance companies (referred to as financial institutions or short, FIs) to get their views on current IT trends, key requirements, and investment plans. This year, the sample consisted of 591 institutions from Southern, Central, and Northern European regions, Asia, and the US. 

Most FIs surveyed were optimistic when asked about how their IT departments’ budgets would change in 2024, with 67% of participants expecting their budgets to rise. There is a similar picture with line-of-business managers’ budgets. Also, investments seem to have diverse purposes as the goals of digital transformation projects are both exploitative (such as optimization of internal processes) and explorative (such as creating new digital business models and positioning) in nature. 

Other key findings from this survey are: 

• The hybrid cloud migration approach seems attractive to FIs globally. This may be due to the fact that the hybrid cloud model enables them to keep sensitive data on-premises while utilizing the scalability of the cloud for less sensitive operations.
• With ever-growing adoption rates for digital channels (e.g., web, mobile), FIs are striving to sustain a consistent digital customer experience (CX) across all touchpoints to meet customers’ expectations. Our survey results indicate that improvements in the digital CX have become a top priority for FIs globally.
• Technologies that support the handling of data – from collection, management, analysis, and evaluation through to visualization – are perceived as particularly important.
• Many FIs rely on a core application where all data is centrally available; extensions are realized through open interfaces. This comes as no surprise, as there are more and more core platforms that are offered as a series of independently deployable microservices.
• Open APIs and platform-based services create new potential points of attack and make it necessary to implement new and holistic security strategies. According to the results, many FIs strongly focus on securing their application landscapes, in particular. 

The survey was conducted in March/April 2023. Find out more in PAC’s most recent issue of CxO Survey – Investment Priorities – Banking and Insurance – InSight Analysis – Worldwide, coming soon on SITSI®.