A depressed world economy and tougher regulation will make the financial markets rally to IT in order to underpin more risk-averse business strategies. That’s according to a new report from Ovum.

Regulatory compliance in particular will place further IT investment requirements on market participants, with risk analytics (covering market, credit, operational, and a new dimension, liquidity risk) becoming key. In particular, companies will harness emerging ‘in-memory’ technology capabilities to handle the kinds of volumes of data at the speeds required for intraday risk management and reporting.

The buy side will focus on client servicing as investor returns wane in 2013, making reports on how portfolios are performing more transparent, frequent, and readily accessible, with a big push into enabling access from mobile devices, for instance. In an effort to drive cost out of its business, the sell side is predicted to increase the automation and optimise post-trade operations, with cloud services becoming a serious option for a number of functions.

“With 2013 comes a lot of challenges for the financial markets, with both the buy and sell sides of the industry turning to greater use of technology as the solution,” comments Rik Turner, senior analyst, financial services technology, Ovum. “The buy side is looking to lower its dependence on brokers with heavy investment into front-end services as it looks to retain a much less faithful client base, whilst the sell side looks to underscore its complex multi-asset strategies with greater product accounting.”

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