Worldwide IT spending in the financial sector is set to dip by 2.4% to $486 billion in 2015, says Gartner, with the rising dollar chiefly responsible for the slowdown.
Although all industries are expected to experience negative growth in 2015, given currency exchange rates, Gartner's projections for the top three sectors are consistent with previous forecasts, with retail, banking and securities, and healthcare providers leading the way.
Even as IT spending in the banking and securities segment is forecast to decline in 2015, Gartner expects banks in developed markets to double their tech budgets to support digital and other new technology initiatives through 2019 while reducing legacy maintenance, to sell products, service customers and reduce operational costs.
"As banks grapple with growth and regulation issues, while battling new financial technology competitors, they will also look to invest in data solutions, driven by availability of big data, analytics tools and competition from fintech companies that rely on big data and analytics more to reach the right customer and analyse the risks," says Rajesh Kandaswamy, research director at Gartner. “Cybersecurity remains an area of focus for executives in consumer banking segments, while an emerging area of interest is smart machine technology, including artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, intelligent analytics and deep learning."
In the adjacent retail sector, spending will slow by a mere 1.5% as instore IT upgrades to accommodate mobile payments and the imminent US changeover to EMV are rolled out.