APAC banks' IT spending to hit $67.1b in 2017

It's a 5.4% increase from 2016.

IT spending by banking and securities firms in the mature Asia/Pacific region will reach $67.1 billion in 2017, an increase of 5.4 percent from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. This forecast provides total enterprise IT spending for internal spending and spending data on data center systems, devices, software, IT services and telecom services.

Gartner said the mature Asia/Pacific region consists of the following countries: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea. In US dollar terms, Japan is the largest market, but New Zealand will have the highest growth rate in 2017 at 6.4 percent, followed by Japan at 5.6 percent.

The software segment will grow the fastest at 8.5 percent in 2017, as firms in the banking and securities industry invest more in applications, infrastructure and vertical-specific software. Applications is growing the fastest in this category contributing 12.4 percent growth in 2017.

“The banking and securities industry is focused on investing in advanced data and analytics, as new tools like artificial intelligence are becoming popular in this industry,” said Moutusi Sau, principal research analyst at Gartner.