Brazilian banks see drop in IT spending
There was a 9.5 percent decrease in IT spending within the banking sector in Brazil in 2015, according to numbers from a Deloitte survey commissioned by the Brazilian Banking Federation (Febraban).
Brazilian banking institutions spent a total of R$19bn ($5.5bn) in technology projects in 2015, of which R$5bn ($1.44bn) were investments in new projects, with the remainder being running costs.
In 2014, banks in the country spent R$8bn ($2.3bn) in new projects while R$13bn ($3.7bn) went towards running expenses.
According to the Febraban survey, 44 percent of the total amount spent in technology within Brazilian banks last year went towards software, while 35 percent were spent on hardware and 20 percent on telecommunications.
The decrease in spending is attributed to the fact that Brazilian banks are generally reaping the benefits from big investments in datacenter transformations over the last three to four years and that prices of IT products and services have decreased as a result of the current recession, according to Febraban.
Additionally, these institutions have focused on the adoption of cloud computing as well as software and infrastructure-as-a-service, which have been considered as running costs in the survey, which polled the 17 largest banks in Brazil.
According to Febraban, the banking sector accounts for 13 percent of the Brazilian ITC market.