China Bank IT Spending to Reach US $10.5 Billion by 2005
Abstract
China’s largest banks are in the midst of a massive IT overhaul, which will consolidate redundant systems, enhance core capabilities, and extend the reach and functionality of multiple delivery channels. As a result, bank IT spending in China is growing rapidly at 23.9 percent year-on-year, and will reach US$10.5 billion by 2005, according to a new report from Celent, Bank Technology in China.
China is host to the world's most extensive banking system. It is also one of the most complex and fragmented banking IT infrastructures in existence, built piecemeal over the past three decades and beset with redundant systems, a plethora of disparate standards, and low levels of inter-regional connectivity. Within five years, however, this picture will change radically. By 2007, Chinese banks will consolidate their sprawling and non-standardized IT systems, enhance service delivery channels to their retail and corporate customers, including ATMs, Internet banking, mobile banking, and call centers, and build out data warehousing, CRM, and business intelligence capabilities.
"A number of factors are inducing China's major banks to upgrade. As a result of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), foreign banks can compete more freely in the Chinese market. Domestic banks will need to modernize in order to compete effectively with these new entrants," says Neil Katkov, author of the report. "There is also intense internal competition, with smaller, regional players winning customers away from the largest banks, in large part due to the new, integrated, multi-channel IT infrastructures that these upstarts have built over the past five years."
The report analyzes demographic trends shaping China's banking market, the size of the market and its institutional structure and major players, IT spending by Chinese banks, and initiatives and trends in core systems, branch automation, and delivery channels (ATMs and cards, Internet banking, and mobile banking). The report also discusses banks' use of system integrators and vendor-supplied solutions, and describes the leading domestic bank IT vendors. The report contains 21 charts and 7 tables.