IT Spend Shifts to Risk

As global financial markets quake, cross-industry businesses are ramping up spending on risk management.

Indeed, a new report from IDC Financial Insights forecasts risk technology spending across the banking, capital markets and insurance sectors will reach over $74 billion by 2015, outpacing the growth of overall IT spending in financial services and comprising 15 percent of total IT spending in financial services in 2012. The report, Worldwide Risk Technology Spending 2011 Analysis and Forecasts, also breaks down technology spending throughout seven risk submarkets, including enterprise risk management and infrastructure, liquidity and asset liability management, market risk and trading, compliance and control, credit risk, financial crimes, and information security.

Michael Versace, global risk research director at IDC, says the goal of this research is to define and measure the risk technology market in a user-oriented, holistic manner. "Although our macro-economic assumptions continue to point to downward pressure on overall IT spending in financial services, in our estimation, the risk technology market is large and still growing at a good clip."

IDC identifies several key drivers that are fueling the growth, including regulatory uncertainty and compliance demands, mandates to improve overall corporate governance and financial performance across the financial enterprise, and the need to modernize and protect critical risk management infrastructures. These findings reconcile a report yesterday from Chartis Research, which credited regulations, such as the Dodd-Frank Act and Solvency II, as a primary impetus for technology spending in the financial services industry.