It’s no secret that the financial services sector is the biggest spender on ICT in the country. According to BMI-T’s SA ICT Vertical Market Sizing and Forecasting Report, the financial, business and other services sector accounted for over 30 percent of total expenditure on information and communications technology in South Africa. But what trends are dominating the sector?

Because of security, financial institutions, especially banks, cannot feasibly outsource their IT departments, a trend seen in most other sectors. Most functions are retained in-house. However, desktop support is one area where outsourced solutions make economic sense. Gijima AST, one local company focused on the financial services sector, offers customer interface as well as electronic payment solutions. Electronic payment (largely back office) solutions are seeing tougher security as well as further automation of processes. The trend is for cheques and other documents to be scanned and archived for simple access from anywhere on the bank’s network.