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Legacy IT Inhibits Business Change in Financial Services

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.

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Legacy IT Inhibits Business Change in Financial Services

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.

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
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In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

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In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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