The Banking Industry Is Spending Wildly on the Latest Tech
The finance industry is investing billions on digitization, but doesn’t seem to know whether this is helping profit.
Digital money.
Photographer: PETRAS MALUKAS/AFPIt’s rare for an anonymous quote in a management consultant’s report to make much of an impression. But the admission by the chief financial officer of an unnamed global bank on the mystery that surrounds his own company’s technology spending is striking. It’s especially troubling for investors in the finance sector.
“I know 50% of my digital transformation spend is wasted — I just don’t know which 50%,” the CFO was cited as saying in an Oliver Wyman report on bank tech (in a nod to a famous old marketing quote). An executive also confessed to feeling “old-fashioned” when asking why there hadn’t been any profitable returns from their firm’s digital investments, adding to the sense that sound strategies are a rare thing in this field.