Short video summary called Data Bits on the new 2023 Tech Priorities Editorial Research Report.
Transcription:
Michael Moeser (00:10):
Hello and thanks for joining today’s program. This video series explores research arising conducts on the selection of financial services topics that are relevant for today’s executives. My name is Michael Moser and I’m the author of the study that will be Today’s Topic: 2023 Tech Priorities is Your Tech Agenda set for safety or Standout Growth? In this study, we tap into the collective wisdom of over 500 professionals across banking, insurance, wealth management, and mortgage industries to understand how they plan to manage their company’s tech priorities, address budget and staffing needs for 2023 and align technology roadmaps with spending priorities to advance business objectives. Okay, let’s start with our first topic, budgets and staffing for 2023. Most tech budgets and staffing levels are rising or holding steady. Over half of survey respondents report that their companies are increasing their budgets for this year, about one quarter keeping budgets steady, and only one in 10 state that they’ll see a decline in tech investments this year, along the same lines as the high priority that IT budgets are receiving for 2023.
(01:18)
One message about staffing is clearly being heard. Few, if any IT staff cuts are expected. About 83% report that their companies are either adding staff or maintaining existing IT headcounts. Now our next topic covers the top strategic business priorities or goals. Companies are focused on keeping their businesses safe. In this chart, we see that the top business strategies that firms will be deploying over the next two years are focused on enterprise safety with an emphasis on the customer coming in third place. Overall, in this chart, we see the top priority is maintaining regulatory compliance, followed by enhancing cybersecurity, and then in third places fostering innovation and the customer experience. Now moving on, we cover alignments to moving goals forward effectively. Aligning technology roadmaps and investments to move goals forward is a challenge for most companies in a number of areas. As we can see in this graph, more than half of respondents are reporting success in moving goals forward in only three areas, maintaining compliance, enhancing cybersecurity, and facilitating remote slash hybrid work environments.
(02:27)
Now there’s outside pressure to succeed on these goals. Regulators actively performing audits, hackers attacking poor cyber defensive defenses, and failure to support remote work environments causes workers to leave. Let’s quickly cover where opportunities do exist. There are several areas where better alignments between spending and tech roadmaps can make stronger progress on goals. In this chart, we see survey respondents are reporting misalignment between spending and tech roadmaps that are inefficient on three very high priority goals in all four verticals, including fostering customer experience innovation, improving data-driven decision making, and reducing operating expenses. Now, there are two other areas on this chart I’d like to draw your attention to where we’re highlighting as selected opportunities, improving the functionality of existing products. This is unique to banking, insurance, and mortgage sectors as they rank this goal higher than wealth management, yet the collective performance is low. The second area is increasing the speed to marker for new products, and that’s unique to mortgages as it rates this goal higher in priority, yet again, overall effectiveness is low.
(03:41)
Finally, let’s talk about active and pause tech priorities. There is strong alignment between the top goals being pursued over the next two years, and the top priority shaping firms as tech agendas for 2023. Enhance security as a technology priority addresses both the need to maintain compliance and address cybersecurity fraud mitigation priority addresses not only improves cybersecurity, but improves the customer experience and how affirm addresses its safety compliance. Customer onboarding directly impacts the third top priority of customer experience innovation. However, there are a number of technologies that are being put on the back burner that could act as transformational forces and deliver outsized results for investments being made. These include mobile apps, APIs and API integrations, cloud migrations, and digital payments. So in conclusion, let’s wrap up with a few final thoughts. Fostering customer experience innovation probably is the biggest opportunity. It’s the third key priority for companies over the next two years, and it’s also where there’s a big misalignment between dollars being spent and the tech roadmaps in place to achieve success on this goal, cybersecurity represents a long-term annuity that keeps on delivering benefits. As fraud increasingly moves online. This area is one that could be expected to continue to receive long-term attention and funding, improve data-driven decision making and reducing operating expenses represent two additional high priority areas that have moderate to significant misalignments between resources being invested and the tech roadmaps being used to achieve goal success. For more information and a copy of the full report, please visit any of the four digital publications involved in this research, including American Banker, Digital Insurance, National Mortgage News and Financial Planning. Thank you for your time today.
