Glenn Mathis is President and Chief Operating Officer of Integris, a national managed IT service provider.
When it comes to technology investments, business leaders are ready to spend.
That’s what my company learned when we surveyed C-suite executives at more than 1,000 community banks and credit unions nationwide. In our report, “Understanding US Bank’s Annual IT Spend 2025,” none of the executives surveyed had plans to cut their IT investments in 2025. In fact, most—88%—expect to increase tech and IT spending by at least 10%.
This isn’t surprising, considering the increase in cybersecurity threats and the promise of an artificial intelligence-enabled future. But how banks plan to spend their money is particularly telling. I think it can be a bellwether of the overall IT sentiment at “Main Street” businesses across America.
Here’s what these leaders had to tell us.
1. Cybersecurity is still many leaders’ top concern.
Of the bank leaders we surveyed, 86% said cybersecurity is their “first or second priority,” and 52% believed they were currently not spending enough in this area.
Their concern is likely due to the rise of cybersecurity attacks in recent years for businesses of all kinds. Cyberattacks were at an all-time high in 2023, with 3,205 publicly reported data compromises that affected more than 353 million people, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s 2023 report (registration required). Most cases of identity theft touch financial institutions in some way, as you can see from Federal Trade Commission Data. According to the agency, among the top identity theft types are credit cards, loans or leases, bank accounts, and employment or tax-related, all of which have a customer’s banking information at their core.
If that weren’t enough, the CrowdStrike outage earlier this year brought home the importance of multiple cybersecurity safeguards. As a provider of cybersecurity monitoring for businesses, CrowdStrike issued a system update that failed and crashed computers across the globe. It caused an estimated $1.15 billion in direct financial losses for Fortune 500 companies in the banking industry alone, according to estimates from Parametrix (download required).
Whether the disruptions are coming from system failures or coordinated cybercrime, businesses of all kinds should harden their cybersecurity posture, and redundancy is the key. Many of our clients are adding extra cloud backup and disaster recovery strategies, more monitoring tools and employee security awareness training.
2. Leaders are looking forward to the promise of advanced data analytics.
Among the banking leaders we surveyed, 42% ranked data analytics as one of their top two priorities as well. Data analytics tools can help banks glean new customer insights and assist institutions in their investment decisions. This tracks with our clients in nearly every industry vertical, as I’m seeing AI-assisted business intelligence tools cropping up in almost every platform.
Powerful AI business intelligence tools are available now for most business sectors. In 2025, we’ll likely see them become standard parts of every business decision tree. Now is the time for leaders to start asking the question: What are the use cases for AI/BI that would drive our institution forward? What are our best options for tools that are scalable, affordable and data-safe? Who would have access to these tools, and how would we manage training and implementation? Now is the time to start planning for your AI-enabled future.
3. Banks are investing in AI for enhanced customer experiences.
Anytime new tech capabilities roll out, the first question has to be: How can we use these new tools to improve our customer services? The advent of AI is an especially good opportunity here, as 40% of our banking industry respondents said they’re prioritizing digital transformation and the customer experience, and many are planning to use AI and business intelligence tools to improve customer experiences.
In the future, I believe banking customers will expect to see more personalization and enhanced security. Given this, banks can consider:
• Personalized banking, complete with customized financial advice and product recommendations baked right into customer portals.
• Chatbots and virtual assistants that offer 24/7 customer support, answer questions and give financial advice. Bank of America’s “Erica” system is one example of this.
• Fraud detection and prevention that monitors transactions in real time.
• Voice and facial recognition to verify customers’ identity.
• Emotional AI, which can be used behind the scenes during customer interactions to help interpret and respond to customer emotions.
4. Organizations are in the later stages of modernizing tech infrastructure.
Investment in cloud productivity is still important, but many banks have already shifted from initial cloud integrations to long-term usage of these tools. Instead, we see many organizations spending on the hardware infrastructure they need to meet these new demands. For instance, I observed Windows 10 end-of-life was a key issue coming up this year for many businesses. When Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10 by October 2025, IT research firm Canalys estimated that 240 million PCs will become functionally obsolete, working without the support needed to run Windows 11. (Full disclosure: My company is a Microsoft partner.)
Banks, and other companies, should look at their inventory and may need to consider replacing older devices to help future-proof their platforms.
IT investment is alive and well—and building the potential for business growth.
While the economic landscape isn’t always easy to predict, the efficiencies being gained by new technologies are already rewriting the future of productivity. Generative AI alone could add a staggering $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the world’s economy, according to McKinsey.
As I see it, new technology platforms will help make the work world safer and more efficient while opening up service opportunities we can now only dream of. The fact that traditionally slow-to-change community banks are embracing these changes early should be an encouraging sign for innovation.
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