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JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.
- A recent report by UBS on bank's IT budgets outlined how much US banks are spending on technology.
- JPMorgan and Bank of America were the two highest spenders, investing $11.4 billion and $10 billion, respectively.
- There was a significant gap between the four largest spenders and the remainder of banks.
Big banks love to boast about their focus on innovation and installing cutting-edge technology. But how much is Wall Street really spending on IT?
A recent report by UBS analyzing US banks technology budgets offered a breakdown of the investments large cap banks are putting towards their tech. The Swiss bank used a combination of conference transcripts, FactSet data and the banks own internal information to compile the chart.
It should come as no surprise that the biggest players in the space - JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo - maintain the largest budgets.
JPMorgan, the highest spender, has a $11.4 billion technology budget for 2019, a 5.6% uptick from 2018 ($10.8 billion). Bank of America's IT spend is second at $10 billion, followed by Wells Fargo ($9 billion) and Citigroup (roughly $8 billion).
It's worth noting JPMorgan said nearly half its 2018 technology budget was focused on disruptive technology within the bank. Bank of America, meanwhile, put 30% of its budget towards "technology initiative investment spend". In February, Vanessa Colella, Citigroup's chief innovation officer, spoke to Business Insider about how her bank approaches tech investments.
The size of technology budgets decreases significantly beyond the top four, as US Bancorp is the next largest at roughly $2.5 billion, of which nearly half is considered operating expenses, according to the report.
The breakdown indicates the widening gap between large and small banks technology budgets. The latter has struggled to keep up, limiting the amount of innovation regional banks are capable of as they're required to focus on just maintaining older systems.
You can find the entire breakdown from the UBS report below:
UBS
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