Wipro targets banking services in emerging markets

Wipro has identified the banking services sector in the Asia, Africa and Latin America regions to grow its systems business, since companies are currently refreshing their IT.

The financial services industry is now undergoing an upgrade of existing IT setups to cope with future regulatory- and customer-driven online and mobile services, said Vijay Sharma, Wipro's vice president and head of domain and industry advisory services for banking, financial services and insurance (BSFI), according to a Press Trust of India (PTI) report Tuesday.

Both Sharma and Suresh Raman, Wipro's head of banking sales for Asia-Pacific and Japan, said global banks were expected to spend around US$150 billion in 2012 on IT-related upgrades, revamps and system refreshes.

About a third of that is expected to come from Asian banks, which are globalizing their operations including in developed markets in the west, the executives added.

Beyond the emerging markets, the Indian outsourcing giant expects global banks to also increase their annual IT spend by 2 percent to 3 percent, the report noted.

Besides the prevalence of online consumer spending and rising security risk threats, new financial regulations and standards such as Basel III mean banks will ask for more sophisticated financial IT systems, the Wipro executives said.

Sharma noted more banks will invest in IT system efficiencies and cost reduction over the long term, given the increasing use of Web- and mobile-based banking services and transactions. These organizations are also streamlining their multiple applications to make them secure and user-friendly, he added.

Wipro's targeting of the banking and financial services sector comes just days after it announced it will spin off a number of its non-IT units to concentrate on the more profitable IT services side of its business.