Our deep expertise in the financial services sector enables us to assist our clients with an increasingly complex set of challenges.

The financial services industry spends nearly half a trillion dollars on information technology (IT) and associated services every year - more than any other industrial sector. Many financial services firms are trying to do more with less, recognizing that they cannot afford to simply carry on as they have done in the past. With decreasing budgets and increasing system complexity, the need for a strategic lens on IT is becoming more apparent.

Traditional cost-driven IT management perspectives fail to recognize the strategic role IT plays in shareholder value creation in financial services.

• Legacy systems have been extended and enhanced to the point where their cost of management inhibits investment in innovative technology.
• Technology and business strategies are both interlinked and increasingly complex: there is intense management challenge to improve internal command of business requirements and role of third parties.

Financial services firms need to be able to measure the shareholder value gained from IT investment in order to make strategic decisions with their IT portfolio.

• IT spend is bifurcating into 'scale factors' and 'information analytics'. The characteristics and skill set for these two areas are highly specialized.
• As a result, the role of the technology function - and the CIO - may split. The management of technology infrastructure will become distinct from the management of information and analytics
• More 'financial utilities' will emerge as IT value migrates from financial services firms, where it is not given enough credit in P/E multiples, to IT specialists, where it is highly appreciated

The portfolio management perspective applied to IT will allow firms to measure the value of their IT investments. Once the portfolio management perspective is gained, value-based decisioning can be achieved.

• With the automation and connectivity phase of IT development having reached maturity, the next phase will focus the complexity of information overload - using filters, processing and analytics to help sort through data on customers, markets and prices.
• M&A, outsourcing and partnership strategies will move beyond cost consolidation and take better account of the strategic relevance of operations architecture.

Approach
Our Financial Services Practice works with clients in two general ways:

• Business and IT (collaborative): When a client looks to change how the business is supported by IT, the CIO or general management involved in IT governance engages our services. Business line managers are involved in aligning and delivering solutions at the operational level.
• IT-centric: When a client seeks to change how IT itself is organized and delivers it's services, we are typically engaged by the business head with IT responsibility or the head of IT. Business unit stakeholders are closely involved at major project milestones.