Insurers still spending on IT
If you're looking for work in IT in finance in the first quarter of this year, your best bet is within the insurance sector - or fund management at a push - as the majority of financial services firms are looking to scale back their tech spend, according to a new survey.
The latest quarterly survey from the CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers shows a balance of +58% insurance companies and 22% of fund managers plan to spend more on IT in the next 3 months.
By comparison, banks, building societies, life insurers and securities trading houses are all looking to cut the amount of money they spend on technology, according to the latest quarterly survey by the CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The biggest fall was within building societies, which was in positive territory throughout last year, with a balance of -85% of respondents predicting an increase in IT spend.
John Hitchens, UK banking leader at PwC, puts this down to "an increasingly aggressive approach to cost-cutting" resulting from low levels of mortgage advances and shrinking margins.
A new study by Celent echoes this grim sentiment and predicts that financial services firms will spend 1.3% less on IT in 2009 than last year. This might seem slight, but it contrasts with a 4.5% rise in 2008 and 6.4% growth in 2007.
What's more, in another blow to job prospects, the majority of the money will be invested in the maintenance of existing systems, rather than new projects. This follows the pattern of last year, when 71.9% was spent on maintenance, says Celent.
