Erstwhile chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker said recently that the only financial innovation of this generation was the ATM. He was speaking in the context of the rampant fraud in Wall Street, which has spent millions on robot trading programs to rig markets, financial products with nothing to back them and fee structures that explode on purpose. For the rest of the world, spending money on financial software is still essential. But what are the trends? Will cloud computing ride to the rescue? And how can true innovation take place in what is traditionally a very conservative environment?

Francois Beyleveld, principal performance management consultant at SAS Institute, says he’s seen a lot of companies looking to build rather than going out to buy.