Legacy IT Inhibits Business Change in Financial Services
April 12, 2022
Share this

Global leaders in financial services and insurance (FSI) believe that legacy IT infrastructure and applications are holding back their business transformation aspirations and automation objectives, according to a new report, Financiers ridden with technical debt, from The Economist Intelligence Unit (The EIU), supported by Appian.


The need for business agility, spurred by recent global events, is causing FSI organizations to reimagine how they do business as they work at an accelerated pace to adapt to change.

Key findings include:

■ 71% of IT decision makers (ITDMs) in FSI organizations report that the growth of technology project requests exceeds IT budget growth, which is higher than the global average of 64%.

■ 87% of respondents say their organization has encountered operational difficulties in addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic.

■ 81% of FSI leaders say their organization needs to improve its IT infrastructure and applications to better adapt to external change.

■ 44% of ITDMs believe inadequate collaboration between the IT function and business units is a chief barrier to digitization, compared to 27% of business decision-makers.

According to survey findings, automation is viewed as being one of the most important technologies over the next 12 months by 31% of global financial services executives. The report highlights that more than a third (34%) of ITDMs believe that the reduction or elimination of legacy IT would most help their organization achieve its automation objectives.

However, only 17% of financial services business decision-makers believe that overcoming legacy IT would be a key factor in helping their firms to embrace automation.

"Financial services and insurance companies must bolster collaboration between IT teams and the business units they serve. Both groups recognize the need to collaborate more to meet their digital and automation ambitions with speed, quality, and security. Our report shows that by working together, modernizing dated legacy systems, and adopting agile methodologies, organizations can overcome barriers to digitization," said Michael Heffner, VP of Solutions and Industry Go-to-Market at Appian.

Methodology: Financiers ridden with technical debt is based on a survey conducted by The EIU of more than 1,000 IT decision-makers (ITDMs) and senior business executives at financial services, banking, and insurance corporations around the globe.

Share this

The Latest

September 27, 2023

Navigating observability pricing models can be compared to solving a perplexing puzzle which includes financial variables and contractual intricacies. Predicting all potential costs in advance becomes an elusive endeavor, exemplified by a recent eye-popping $65 million observability bill ...

September 26, 2023

Generative AI may be a great tool for the enterprise to help drive further innovation and meaningful work, but it also runs the risk of generating massive amounts of spam that will counteract its intended benefits. From increased AI spam bots to data maintenance due to large volumes of outputs, enterprise AI applications can create a cascade of issues that end up detracting from productivity gains ...

September 25, 2023

A long-running study of DevOps practices ... suggests that any historical gains in MTTR reduction have now plateaued. For years now, the time it takes to restore services has stayed about the same: less than a day for high performers but up to a week for middle-tier teams and up to a month for laggards. The fact that progress is flat despite big investments in people, tools and automation is a cause for concern ...

September 21, 2023

Companies implementing observability benefit from increased operational efficiency, faster innovation, and better business outcomes overall, according to 2023 IT Trends Report: Lessons From Observability Leaders, a report from SolarWinds ...

September 20, 2023

IT leaders are driving an increasing number of automation initiatives as a way to stay competitive, reduce costs and scale as they navigate an unpredictable social and economic environment, according to the 2023 State of Automation in IT survey conducted by Jitterbit ...

September 19, 2023

Customer loyalty is changing as retailers get increasingly competitive. More than 75% of consumers say they would end business with a company after a single bad customer experience. This means that just one price discrepancy, inventory mishap or checkout issue in a physical or digital store, could have customers running out to the next store that can provide them with better service. Retailers must be able to predict business outages in advance, and act proactively before an incident occurs, impacting customer experience ...

September 18, 2023
Digital transformation is key to ensuring companies keep up with the competitive market landscape. Putting digital at the core of a business can significantly reduce operating expenses and inefficiencies. However, this process often means changing the way internal teams work with one another. To help with the transition, this blog offers chief experience officers (CXOs) advice on how to lead a successful digital transformation project ...
September 14, 2023

Earlier this year, New Relic conducted a study on observability ... The 2023 Observability Forecast reveals observability's impact on the lives of technical professionals and businesses' bottom lines. Here are 10 key takeaways from the forecast ...

September 13, 2023
On September 10, MGM Resorts experienced what it called a "cybersecurity issue" that had a major impact on the company's systems, showing how cyberattacks can bring down applications, ultimately causing problems for a company in many ways ...
September 12, 2023

Only 33% of executives are "very confident" in their ability to operate in a public cloud environment, according to the 2023 State of CloudOps report from NetApp. This represents an increase from 2022 when only 21% reported feeling very confident ...