The study, commissioned by managed services provider Claranet, surveyed 900 end user IT leaders from mid-market businesses in six European markets - Germany, Benelux, France, Spain, Portugal, and the UK.

Focusing on DevOps adoption, it found that 45% of financial services organisations have already developed a DevOps approach. By comparison, only 32% of organisations in a variety of other industries, including retail, software, and digital and media, have done so.

Michel Robert, MD of Claranet UK, comments: “Fintech startups are using technology to shake things up in the financial services industry with a customer-centric, agile approach. For the big incumbents in the industry the adoption of DevOps suggests a change in mindset and is likely being used as a way of taking on these startups and learning from their innovations."

Financial services organisation who have not yet adopted DevOps are also much more likely to introduce an agile programming methodology, the study found. Whilst almost 25% of the overall sample stated that they are either not planning to implement DevOps or haven’t yet made a decision, only 12% of financial services organisations are in the same position.

Says Roberts: “Much of the financial services market is vulnerable to disruption and the dominant players have organisational, cultural, and regulatory impediments to rapid change. This complexity is an impetus to move faster, and taking a DevOps approach can unlock new opportunities for growth. By encouraging faster software and application development, DevOps enables financial services organisations to streamline the way they deal with the vast quantities of data they process internally. Vitally, it also enables them to rapidly develop new products and services, allowing them to compete with the fintech disruptors."