Business Focus is a weekly column providing at-a-glance
statistics and commentary on spending priorities and trends in
particular sectors. This week we look at fund
managers.
Fund managers, who oversee and manage the investments of
institutional and private investors, are highly dependent on IT to
analyse and manage their asset and stock selections.
It is no surprise, therefore, that among larger organisations
technology investment is nearly double the UK-wide business
average. The differential is more marked among small and
medium-sized enterprises, where average spending is close to three
times the IT investment of their counterparts across all
industries.
The figures show that larger fund managers spend on average
£15,155 per desktop a year, against the UK average of £8,897. SME
fund managers spend £8,874 per desktop per year, compared with a UK
average of £3,132.
This level of spending outstrips the investment made by retail
banks, but, among larger firms at least, is some way short of the
average annual IT spend among stockbrokers, securities firms and
commodity brokers of £20,017.
The difference in investment between these two branches of the
investment community reflects stockbrokers' reliance on rapid
real-time data from many sources to enable decision making on
trades. For now at least, fund managers' long-term perspective on
some of their investments puts the use of expensive automated
algorithmic trading systems further down their priority list,
though competition in the years ahead could move the goalposts and
drive further IT spending.
More Business Focus articles online
www.computerweekly.com
Methodology
The analysis is based on Computer Weekly's database of more than
60,000 IT budget holders, twice yearly user IT expenditure surveys,
CBI/Kew senior executive surveys, government surveys, government
demographic data, HM Treasury economic forecasts and Cambridge
Econometrics industry sector forecasts.
Further details
www.kewassociates.co.uk