Big four bank First National Bank will spend about R2.3 billion on IT this year, while also wanting to get the most out of its infrastructure and keeping a lid on costs.
Parent company First Rand, in its results announcement for the year to June, released in the middle of this month, cautioned that overall economic conditions remained challenging and uncertainty over the sustainability of the recovery weighed on credit growth.
First Rand says FNB's South African operations produced a strong performance for the year, as profit and return on equity improved. The bank will continue to invest in IT infrastructure as it rolls out more electronic service delivery channels to grow its customer base.
FNB expects IT budgets to come in close to what was spent in the financial year to June 2010 as it aims to “derive greater productivity from our IT investments”, says FNB CIO Raj Makanjee. Last year, IT-related expenditure was R2.3 billion.
Makanjee says the bank will continue to invest in technology as “we see this as one of our key differentiators as proven by our many market firsts on innovative banking offerings, enabled by technology”. Makanjee points to the bank's initiatives, such as cellphone banking, its recent PayPal launch and its Send Money offering.
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