Infotech Lead Asia: Indian banking & security companies will spend Rs 422 billion on IT products and services in 2013, up more than 13 percent over 2012 revenue of Rs 373 billion.
Gartner says this forecast includes spending by financial institutions on internal IT (largely personnel), hardware, software, external IT services and telecommunications.
IT services is the largest overall spending category at Rs 132 billion in 2013 which confirms the strong focus on the financial services sector by IT services providers, many of which are leveraging their prominent position within this domestic market.
Software is forecast to achieve the highest growth rate amongst the top level IT spending categories – at about 18 percent in 2013.
“The expansion strategy of banks is still paramount in India, as well as in other countries of the APAC region. The Reserve Bank of India is making plans to increase the penetration of banks across the country and even opening up the market to new entrants,” said Vittorio D’Orazio, research director at Gartner.
In these cases, the front office technologies for the branch will be very attractive. However, to increase their penetration in India, banks will follow the leverage your customer device trend – or LYCD.
This will evolve the relationship between the bank and its customers over the mobile channel without remarkably increasing IT costs. In fact, we see the penetration rates of the smart phone devices in the triple digits range which is by far greater than any branch expansion rate.
