Technology & Innovation

Managing Application Development: The financial services perspective

April 16, 2019

Global

April 16, 2019

Global
Becca Lipman

Editor, EMEA

Becca is currently a supporting editor and writer for The Economist Intelligence Unit's thought leadership division in the Americas and EMEA. Her primary focus is on healthcare policy and financial market trends. She has also recently developed research programmes that analyse themes in infrastructure and smart cities, as well as C-suite perspectives on talent strategy, small business and IT development. 
 
Before joining the EIU in New York, and later in London, Becca worked as senior editor at Wall Street & Technology where she reported on IT advances in capital markets. She previously held posts as lead editor for a US stock brokerage. Becca earned her bachelor’s degree in both economics and environmental studies from New York University.

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The financial services industry is playing catch-up in a digital age. Amid a period of intense change where regulations are intensifying and competitors with advanced technologies are entering the market, traditional players are intent on remaining relevant. Many are using the cloud and advanced application-development techniques to secure that edge.

To better understand how firms are adapting their strategies and leadership for a digital future, The Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed business executives, IT leaders and application developers across six industries: financial services, retail, government, gaming and media, healthcare, and manufacturing. We found that the financial services sector repeatedly differentiates itself from the other industries. Key insights include:

  • Cloud catch-up: financial services are comparatively slow at adopting cloud technology, but the sector plans to catch up. Nearly two-thirds of financial services respondents (62%) have adopted some degree of cloud infrastructure or applications, and a third (36%) plan to use some degree of cloud infrastructure or applications in the near future. If completed, that would bring the industry’s cloud-adoption rate to a nearly ubiquitous 98%. No differentiation was made between public or private cloud.
  • Apps matter: among financial services respondents, virtually all (97%) say application development is vital to their growth strategy. This sentiment was shared equally by both IT and non-IT executive respondents.
  • Growth strategy: as with most other industries surveyed, financial services emphasises two main goals for its new applications: acquiring new customers (62%) and increasing revenue from current customers with new products and services (57%).
  • App-dev insiders: more than half of financial services respondents (58%) do the majority of this work internally. This is considerably higher than both the all-industry average and the rate for any other industry.
  • Advanced methodologies: financial services organisations are serious adopters of advanced models and methods that include Agile (61%) and DevOps (45%). Both adoption rates exceed the all-industry averages.
  • Security barriers: financial services respondents name security as their top barrier to both app development (50%) and some degree of cloud adoption (49%). No other barrier comes close.

 

 

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