Banking & Financial Services Organizations Ratchet Up ICT Spending to Become Digitally Resilient

Over 70% of banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) organizations across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa (META) region plan to invest in scaling up their digital platform experiences over the next 12-18 months. That's according to the latest research from International Data Corporation (IDC), which also reveals that 62% of organizations in the sector are prioritizing the enablement of customer journeys through investments in digital technologies.

Across the region, banks, insurance, and capital market firms are fervently racing to plug the gaps exposed by a growing credit risk event, capitalizing on opportunities that are emerging from hyper-transacting and hyper-digital customers and reshaping their business models to ensure they are agile enough to respond to these challenging times. And as they strive to become digitally resilient, IDC research shows that over 60% of BFSI organizations in the META region have increased their ICT spending budgets for 2022 over the previous year.

These developments were explored in detail at the IDC Banking & Finance Congress 2022 for the Middle East, which was hosted today (June 28) at Dubai's Hilton Al Habtoor City under the theme "The Future of the Fittest: Revamp, Rebuild, and Reinvest".

"Today’s financial services institutions find themselves playing a complex game of chess; they must reconfigure their strategies, re-examine their priorities, and outthink their opponents in order to win," says Ranjit Rajan, IDC's vice president of research for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa. "This year represents a turning point for banks and insurers as they strive to stay ahead of the competition and remain relevant in an increasingly digital financial services world.

"There is another even more interesting dynamic too — the emergence of fintechs and insurtechs: companies that promise to be more agile and more customer centric than the market's traditional incumbents. But both parties have to collaborate — and in this new age of collaboration, the industry will rely on platforms that are underpinned by technologies like cloud and open source. Platforms will be the way that new value and new revenues can be generated by all."

Rajan presented the event's keynote, "A Road Map for the Future of Financial Services: Platforms of Innovation", while there was a series of expert-led sessions that explored the following topics:

• Engagement Banking: Join the Revolution!

• Cloud Services: The Future of Digital Banking

• Application Resource Management for Hybrid Cloud Environments

• Beyond the Branch: Anywhere Workspace Solutions for Financial Services

• Lifestyle Banking: The Shift from Traditional Banking Services

• Treasury: Enabling Digitalization Around Value, Not Volumes

These were supplemented by two parallel tracks, themed "Run the Bank" and "Change the Bank", while the agenda also incorporated three fascinating panel discussions showcasing first-hand insights from some of the industries most influential business leaders as they tackled the following subjects:

• Smarter Banks: Intelligent Personalization

• Transforming Corporate Banking Products and Services: New Business Realities and Pressures

• Workforce, Work Culture, Workspace: Are We Ready to Play in the New Normal?

The IDC Banking & Finance Congress 2022 in Dubai was supported by the following organizations: Trailblazer Partners: Backbase, Turbonomic, Bespin Global, Alpha Data, VMware; Game Changer Partner: Oracle; Gold Partners: Pure Storage, CoreStack, Appian, Mindgate Solutions; Exhibit Partner: ServiceNow; Dinner Partner: Red Hat; Associate Partners: Dubai Business Women Council (DBWC), UAE Banks Federation (UBF), RAK Chamber of Commerce & Industry; Media Partners: GlobalRisk Community, CIO Coverage, International Business Magazine, Security Middle East.