Emerging technologies, fintechs, changing customer behavior, and the decomposition of the banking industry are just a few of the factors influencing banking technology investment trends — and, thus, how banks transform. To learn how banks are planning to prioritize their technology investments in 2022, my colleague Martha Bennett and I interviewed and surveyed more than two dozen banking business and technology decision-makers and solution partners. We focused on their interest and planned investments in close to 30 different technologies. What did we learn? For starters:

  • While banks continue to keep an eye on costs, there’s a strong focus on revenue growth and improving both customer experience and products — all that in an industry that faces unprecedented change.
  • A few technologies, such as APIs, simple chatbots, and simple robotic process automation, are not emerging anymore. Adoption rates differ by technology, however, as tech teams broadly build on some of these technologies but prefer to wait for improved versions of others.
  • Interest in AI, microservices, and analytics remains high. 5G will become a general-purpose technology that will help deliver value in areas such as security, business insights, and customer experience. Overall investment levels vary, but particularly, budgets for AI/machine learning are high.
  • Emerging technologies such as data meshes, distributed ledger (aka blockchain), and low-code/no-code face varying individual hurdles. Some of these technologies can create value for banks and their customers today, but technology teams should avoid using emerging tech that cannot deliver more value than established technologies at this point — or that may even cause vendor lock-in.
  • There are plenty of tech toys that can distract and keep banks from more pressing tasks. Quantum computing is one, virtual reality another (applicable only to a few areas of banking) — and the metaverse is many years away from creating broad and rich business value for banks and their customers.

Want to learn everything that made our “hot,” “hype,” and “on the radar” lists for 2022? Check out our latest report, The Top Emerging Technologies In Banking In 2022 (subscription required). Got a question after reading this? Click here to book an inquiry.