By silicon.com, 25 January 2005 16:49
End of year reports and predictions by various industry analysts and heads of IT pointed to 2005 being a year when many businesses in the private sector would kickstart their big IT projects again after cutting back and putting things on hold for the last couple of years.
Already, less than a month into 2005, the early signs are that this will be especially true in the banking and financial services sector.
Today this publication revealed leading UK bank Lloyds TSB is to give its group IT staff an "inflation-busting" pay rise this year, with the bank's union rep indicating there are more job adverts and the "green shoots" of recovery.
This followed a report yesterday that the financial services sector has overtaken the public sector in terms of hiring the most IT contractors, an area which the public sector has historically led. The report claims banks are hoovering up contractors to quickly acquire the skills required to get vital IT projects up and running.
Of course other sectors are also spending big money on IT - most notably the government sector, which has some huge national projects on the board this year. Yet finance is the place to be - and that's good news for IT staff, contractors and suppliers.
But it's not just an opportunity for IT vendors and professionals to line their pockets. It's about IT giving an advantage to banks and other financial institutions.
Competition is fierce in the financial sector as is the race for ever-increasing record profits to satisfy shareholders. The use of IT in integrating systems, pushing customers online and making commercial sense out of the vast amounts of customer and transactional data is a key part of that.
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