Four European banks will spend in excess of €2 bn on information technology (IT) in 2002. Deutsche Bank will top the list with €3.1 bn, while UBS and HSBC will spend €2.8 bn each, and ABN Amro will spend €2.3 bn. In all European banks will have spent Euros 45.8 billion by the end of this year. Or so says a new report from Celent Communications.
More importantly, the banks are increasingly prepared to out-source and buy vendor applications rather than build in-house. “European banks are gradually moving away from proprietary development of their applications to greater outsourcing ,” says Octavio Marenzi, managing director at Celent ” With this shift, European banks will have to develop better skills in vendor selection, in the management of multi-vendor projects, and creating IT architectures that allow external software to be integrated more readily.”
The reports goes on to find that, despite difficult market conditions, European banks’ IT budgets continue to grow. However, more resources are now being diverted into projects that can clearly demonstrate positive returns on investment, or serve a mission critical need.