A Kable survey of 131 retail banks finds that 42% are planning to increase their ICT investments in the coming months, which is 4% higher than in 2012. These investments will aim to develop both online and mobile banking as well as personalised services. Meanwhile, the percentage planning to reduce their ICT budget, either slightly or significantly has fallen to 29% in 2013 (from 35% in 2012). Kable believes that retail banks will continue to grow their ICT investments in a move to modernise their operations and expand into new business areas.

The survey shows that retail banks' primary strategic objectives are to improve security/privacy and standardise infrastructure technologies. In order to achieve these strategic objectives, banks are predominantly investing in security products and services, and IT systems management solutions. Spending on enterprise applications is another area of focus, as retail banks look to modernise and automate their banking operations. According to the survey, 90% of the banks are planning to spend in these areas through to the end of 2014.

"Retail banks generally prefer to deploy technologies on-site rather than hosting them", comments Tim Gower, a Kable Research Director. "Many banks are still reluctant to entrust their sensitive customer and financial information to cloud services run by third parties." However, Kable believes that banks are gradually shifting towards hosted services as they identify the importance of cloud solutions to boost their agility and scalability, as well as improve customer responsiveness.