US banks have named S1 Corporation, Microsoft, CheckFree and Corillian as the most important vendors to their consumer e-banking strategies, according to a survey by research firm Gartner.
According to the survey of 193 US banks conducted in September this year, Atlanta-based S1 was ranked the most important vendor to overall consumer e-banking strategies by 18% of respondents, while Microsoft ranked second with 13%.
CheckFree came third with 9% and Corillian fourth with 6%.
The survey also shows that Microsoft has made significant progress in selling personal financial management software, winning 27% of bank market share, while market leader Intuit has 54%.
Avivah Litan, vice president and research director, Gartner, comments: "The survey data suggests that Microsoft's bank software market share will grow, while Intuit's may be stagnating."
"Microsoft offers a broad range of financial applications on top of its core technology solutions, and that makes it an attractive vendor for banks to work with," says Litan.
According to Gartner, IT spending in the banking industry is expected to rise 4.5 percent in 2003, rebounding from a 14.8 percent drop in 2002. The saturated online banking and e-banking support market will continue to consolidate and several more vendors will be acquired.
Gartner advises that vendors focus on selling established bank customers more functionality and applications, in addition to winning new bank customers whose current online banking contracts are expiring.
Litan says price will be a key differentiator of vendors in 2003, putting pressure on them to continue to reduce fees.
"Banks must also focus on channel integration in 2003, to ensure online banking applications are tightly integrated with branch, telephone support and ATM networks," adds Litan.