Over a third (34%) of financial services firms’ IT budgets are being taken up with application support and maintenance, according to a survey of 45 CIOs.

The survey, carried out by business and technology consultancy HCL, showed that the cost of maintaining and supporting applications was increasing year on year for 87% of respondents, while over the last 12 months, financial sector organisations have on average seen a 27% increase in support tickets for application support and maintenance.

Go deeper with GlobalData

Premium Insights

The gold standard of business intelligence.

Find out more

IT spend is forecast to increase throughout 2014 as many banks battle against their aging legacy systems and come under increasing pressure from new entrants to modernise.

Vijay B. Iyer, SVP at HCL Technologies, said: "Application support and maintenance represents a disproportionately large proportion of IT spend. Many organizations are struggling to meet users’ heightened expectations of application performance, which in turn is leading to a growing number of support tickets."

"With the need to drive greater efficiencies and business value from IT, organisations can no longer allow their current application support and maintenance functions to stagnate. By taking a more proactive and efficient approach they can free up capital that could be allocated towards more innovative transformational projects."

The majority (87%) of the financial businesses surveyed admitted they found prioritisation of the IT budget a challenge.

How well do you really know your competitors?

Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.

Company Profile – free sample

Thank you!

Your download email will arrive shortly

Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample

We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form

By GlobalData
Visit our Privacy Policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information of your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address.

A further 89% of respondents said that resource and skills restraints were making it difficult to align business and IT objectives.

The 45 CIOs within various financial services companies around the world surveyed included around 20 retail banks.

Related articles:

Ceska Sporitelna to use FICO analytics to enhance offerings for customers

SAS introduces latest Financial Crimes Suite for banks

OpenEye installs digital displays at 700 Santander branches in US