IDC Financial Insights has outlined its predictions for the new year, setting out trends and themes that company leaders should bear in mind during 2014.
The top 10 predictions are:
* Overall IT spend in financial services will exceed $430-billion in 2014 and will exceed $500-trillion by 2020; consolidation and cooling emerging markets will make an impact.
* Institutions will leverage their investments of the past three years, improving compliance data management with new initiatives to extract additional business and operational value with analytics-based capabilities.
* All modernisation and improvement initiatives will include three components to be successful: technology, people and processes); we’ve focused too long on technology in a vacuum, and in 2014, we’ll see the IT organisation become more important.
* The most successful financial institutions in 2014 will be those that can deliver an enhanced omni-channel experience to their customers and prospects, using new enabling technologies and supported by appropriate business processes.
* Core transformation projects will create opportunities for banks to out-innovate their peers, giving innovators years of technology advantage over core banking laggards.
* Consumers will become the disruptors in financial services by minimising their interactions with their primary institution and increasing the use of a variety of purpose-built apps that provide immediate and focused value.
* Lured by their aggressive growth in premiums, insurers will continue to pay close attention to the emerging market nations in developing Asia/Pacific and Latin America.
* The battle for dominance on the 3rd Platform will begin as firms move from ad hoc, repeatable initiatives to managed initiatives and new application mash-ups that target value creation in customer acquisition, market intelligence and operations.
* Investment in risk management information technologies, services and skills will exceed $85-billion in 2014 as firms industrialise credit and market risk system, operational risk disciplines get renewed support, and management learns to sell risk.
* Mobile and “alternative” payment adoption will remain muted in 2014 as a wide array of providers try to find a value proposition that resonates for merchants and consumers.
According to Scott Lundstrom, group VP and GM of IDC Financial Insights: “As the IT organisation continues to struggle with when and where to invest in today’s technology, financial institutions need to balance investing in innovation and providing value for the customer, with placating the regulators.”