Banking, finance firms to spend Rs469 billion on IT in 2014: Gartner
Increasing card and online banking fraud is a key reason why Indian financial institutions are raising spending on internal and external IT infrastructure
New Delhi: Mumbai-based entrepreneur Pragnya was shocked to receive a phone call from her bank last week inquiring if she had made a ₹ 35,000 debit card purchase. She hadn’t. The bank cancelled the transaction, but there was another call soon after, alerting her to yet another unauthorised transaction of ₹ 25,000. “The bank reversed the transaction, then seized my account and net banking facility. They are now investigating the issue," she said.
Increasing card and online banking fraud is a key reason why Indian financial institutions are raising spending on internal and external IT infrastructure.
Indian banking and securities companies will spend Rs. 469 billion on internal and external IT services, software, hardware and telecommunications in 2014, up 10% from 2013, Gartner Inc. said on Tuesday.
Though IT services is the largest overall spending category at Rs155 billion in 2014, spending on software is forecast to grow fastest this year, the technology research firm said in a report.
“New bank licences will be soon granted by RBI. This will trigger a new wave of IT spending across the country as RBI’s goal is to reach a higher local penetration for banking services, and this means more branches," said Vittorio D’Orazio, research director at Gartner. “Front-office technologies, such as branch-related hardware and software, will be the sweet spot, as well as new channels such as mobile and ATMs/kiosks."
Last month, Gartner said the overall Indian information technology (IT) spend is forecast to reach $73.3 billion in 2015, up 9.4% from $67.1 billion in 2014, making the country third-largest IT market in the Asia-Pacific by 2016 and second-largest by 2018, after China.
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