Fundtech Ltd. has revealed the results of a survey taken at their recent International Client Forum held in London in December, which showed all of the respondents (100%) said that their corporate clients are aware of the STP rate between their back office and the bank and that 54% of them are actively working to improve this rate.
The survey also showed more than half (55%) of the respondents said their institution is more interested in outsourcing this year than last year, but only 13% felt the potential for outsourcing had decreased. As an example of this, of those banks that will invest in Target 2 systems in 2005, 60% said they would outsource by either purchasing software or connecting with an application service provider (ASP).
To help accomplish these goals, 69% of the respondents said that their IT budgets would grow in 2005. While 13% of banks are planning to increase their technology budget by more than 10%, 56% of executives surveyed said their bank plans to increase its technology budget by 0-10%. This is in line with TowerGroup’s recent predictions of a 4.4% rise in technology spending in 2005 by the banking industry.
Overall, banks were split over their priorities for 2005, with 27% focusing on operational savings, 27% focusing on increased revenue production and 26% who considered increased customer services to be their top priority.