In a previous post, we looked at IT spending across the landscape of all major corporate industry verticals of The Global 5000 sized firms and noted that the Financial markets lead the way in terms of spending on IT products and services. Finance covers a wide swath of companies and market niches so we are drilling down a bit further here to look at countries, sub-segments of finance and some specific company examples.

The major powers in the world are naturally where we find the biggest finance spenders. In this case, among Global 5000 companies the largest firms are US, UK, Japan, France, China and Germany.  Finance organizations in these 6 countries represent approximately 60% of the finance IT spending market. While many like to rush into new markets to be present when emerging growth starts to ‘pop’ focusing on the big players can obviously pay dividends.

Withing the finance sector, there are many types of organizations that specialize in various products and services. Looking at the 2 largest – banking and insurance, those verticals represent over 70% of the financial IT services market and banking is 50% larger than the insurance market. These two areas dwarf other niches including brokerage, private equity, holding companies and other investment services firms.

Looking closer at banking, US, France, China, UK and Spain are the countries with the largest IT spending. Drilling down further, we find the top 5 banks by IT spending metrics are:

  • BNP Paribas SA
  • Banco Santander, S.A.
  • Bank of America Corporation
  • HSBC Holdings
  • Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)

In the insurance portion of the financial markets, the major countries leading the way here are: US, Japan, France, Germany and UK. Using the same type of benchmarks applied to insurance company revenues, the Top 5 Global 5000 companies would be:

  • AXA Group
  • Allianz SE
  • Assicurazioni Generali
  • Nippon Life Insurance
  • Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance

As you look at market planning and forecasts for serving the financial sector, lining up these segments, countries and individual companies with your own internal systems will help point you in the direction of some of the big spenders.