Finance's Tech Revolution Risks Being Stymied by Wary Bosses

Luxoft survey finds ignorance of IT particularly bad in U.K.
22% of respondents say issues are keeping them up at night

Rows of colored jumper wires are seen inside a comms room at an office in London, U.K., on Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014. Vodafone Group Plc will ask telecommunications regulator Ofcom to guarantee that U.K. wireless carriers, which rely on BT's fiber network to transmit voice and data traffic across the country, are treated fairly when BT sets prices and connects their broadcasting towers.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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By Lukanyo Mnyanda

November 16, 2017 at 12:01 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

The technical revolution in finance is being stymied because computer experts lack influence in boardrooms and their bosses don’t understand their work and are reluctant to fund it, according to a survey.

Eighty-six percent of respondents to the Excelian Luxoft Financial Services survey said they’ve recently championed a major digital project that failed because it didn’t get past the board. IT executives in the U.K. are particularly frustrated, with 85 percent complaining that senior managers don’t understand tech well enough, compared with 76 percent in Germany.