How to Think Strategically About Your IT Spend in the Face of Economic Winds

With all of the recent turmoil in the banking sector, many financial services organizations are taking a hard look at their compliance and redundancy plans to avoid becoming the next cautionary tale. In particular, today’s most forward-thinking institutions are paying close attention to the essential role that technology plays in mitigating financial risk.

It may be tempting to scale back your tech spend in an uncertain economic landscape — but IT is one of the last areas where you should be cutting costs. In fact, now is the time to think more strategically than ever about your IT spend. Here’s why.

Tech lessons learned from the 2008 financial crisis

You may recall that back in 2008, many financial services organizations panicked and slashed IT spending dramatically, then racked up a massive amount of technical debt. Here at Fairdinkum, we saw a number of institutions make knee-jerk decisions that they spent years regretting — decisions that may have exposed them to considerable risk.

Fifteen years later, in a climate where digital banking is far more ubiquitous than it was in 2008, it’s especially important to maintain a smart posture in regard to your tech infrastructure, no matter what’s going on in the macro environment. By remaining focused on proactive IT investments, you can prevent your institution from being perceived as short-sighted or reckless, and you can help ensure that you’ll emerge from this period of volatility in a stronger position than ever.

The connection between smart tech investments and long-term financial stability

In a turbulent economy, a next-generation IT architecture isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s an absolute necessity.

If you want to perform real-time assessments of operational, financial, strategic, legal and regulatory risk to maintain a compliant posture, you need a next-generation infrastructure capable of analyzing vast amounts of data. You need the ability to scale your IT resources up and down in response to unexpected or adverse events in the financial sector. And you need comprehensive visibility to spot cyberattacks — all while keeping your portfolio diversified enough to avoid becoming the next Silicon Valley Bank.

That’s why today’s most innovative risk officers are working hand-in-hand with CIOs and CTOs to run a broad range of stress tests, ensuring full redundancy and connectivity across a sufficiently robust infrastructure powered by the latest systems and the most up-to-date apps. That level of collaborative oversight will be necessary for your organization to ensure maximum privacy, security and compliance — especially in the face of increased scrutiny from the Fed.

From next-level strategy to real-world execution

Of course, crafting a strategy is only the beginning. You can have the most sophisticated IT infrastructure in the world, but if it’s not properly integrated and managed, you won’t be able to achieve the functionality you need to maintain compliance.

By leaning on a trusted partner like Fairdinkum Consulting, you can avoid making short-sighted IT decisions that could come back to haunt you. You can also integrate and manage your technology tools on a practical, day-to-day basis to help ensure optimal oversight and minimal risk.

We’d love to talk about how you can make strategic IT decisions to weather the current economy — and face the future with confidence. Book your custom consultation today.