Banking and Investment Services CIOs are the Most Focused on Digitalization

Banking and investment services CIOs are increasingly convinced that their old business models and existing value propositions will not be sustainable in the future, according to a survey from Gartner. 2018 CIO Agenda Survey gathered data from 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries and across major industries, including 354 banking and investment services CIOs.

When it comes to strategic business priorities, the survey found that digital business/digital transformation is more important for banking (first priority for 26 percent of respondents) than for all industries (17 percent). Just behind digitalization on 25 percent, growth/ market share is a further key priority, followed by complementary focus areas of profit improvement and customer focus (12 and 11 percent respectively).

Banking and investment services CIOs also place a relatively high priority on the globalization of their businesses (seven percent), a priority which does not make the top 10 at all for the all-industries average. Geographic expansion is clearly important for a business that is (1) easier to scale over physical distances using electronic movements of money, and (2) seeking higher growth in emerging markets.

In response to the question ‘Which technology areas do you think are most important to helping your organization differentiate and win (achieve your mission)?’ BI/analytics topped the list with banking sector CIOs at 26 percent followed by digitalization/digital marketing at 21 percent.

Blockchain does not feature as one of the top technologies since it ranked twentieth for banking and investment services. Despite the attention and visibility, it is not yet seen as a differentiating technology for banks. That may change in the near future.

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Planned additional spend on digitalization/digital marketing is also much more prominent in the banking and investment services sector (22 percent) than the all-industries average (12 percent). Cloud is ranked lower in the banking sector (fourth versus second for all industries) but has the same percentage assigned to it (13 percent). Banks would like to make more use of public cloud, but are held back by their risk-averse culture and their regulators.

For AI, there is only a small difference in absolute terms between banking and all industries, but it is a large one in relative terms (7 versus 4 percent). Being able to turn raw data into actionable information by spotting unexpected patterns or developing superior algorithms will strongly differentiate banks that do this well from their more mediocre rivals.

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