2007 has seen a significant increase in IT budget in the trading / brokerage, fund management, hedge funds and the investments and securities services sectors, according to a report by independent market analyst Datamonitor.
The report entitled, ‘Financial Markets Technology: trends for financial services institutions’ finds that investments and securities services firms are looking to better manage, hedge and mitigate their risk by investing heavily in risk management systems, whereas fund managers are increasing IT spend in their payment systems.
“The necessity to offer superior technology and connectivity options to customers is driving heavy investment for these segments as competition heats up in the space,” says Amit Shah, a financial services technology analyst with Datamonitor and author of the study. “Institutions have realised that technology investment is vital for long-term sustainability and maintaining competitive par, thus for technology vendors, opportunities will continue to present themselves in 2007.”