Corporate banking institutions in Europe are increasing their technology budgets, albeit more slowly than every other region. Across Europe, IT spending will grow moderately in 2024 and is expected to expand further in 2025. While technology investments are growing across the industry, the implications for banks in certain countries can vary considerably—and these are highlighted throughout the report.
Top-level drivers of investment remain relatively unchanged as banks wrestle with compliance and mandate obligations as they try to modernize their application and infrastructure real estate. The key to unlocking this conundrum is through achieving greater speed and agility across the entire technology portfolio—through new architectures and technology building blocks, DevOps, and partnerships. A major theme is the emphasis on data platforms and related technologies to support the ambition around AI.
Some key findings from the research:
- The top three drivers for IT spend in Europe are well aligned with global trends: greater speed and agility, meeting compliance and regulatory requirements, and reducing expenses / increasing operational efficiency.
- Technology budgets are growing quite rapidly in Europe. IT spending will grow by 4.0% on average, and expectations are positive for 2025.
- IT budgets are increasing, but much of that is allocated to “run the bank” initiatives.
- The biggest single product-level priorities this year are trade finance and corporate digital banking platforms. Other key priorities are client lifecycle management and payments.
- The hype around GenAI is turning to action, as an ambitious 70% of banks expect to launch new customer-facing services using the technology in 2024.
