Lloyds Bank research has found that UK financial institutions are increasingly turning to technology to combat the rising costs of living.
The study found that 75% of UK financial institutions are expecting costs of operations to rise in the next year due to the cost of living crisis. 72% believe that investing in technology will lessen the effect of cost increases, and it is predicted that 71% of financial organisations will invest in core technology within the next year.
On the research, Steve Everett, managing director and head of payables and receivables at Lloyds Bank, noted: “It’s encouraging to see that so many financial services firms are alive to the potential for technology to increase efficiency as they, like so many other businesses, combat rising costs in a challenging economic climate.”
UK financial firms predict that investing in technology will allow them to stay afloat during the current turbulence of the economy. Other popular strategies for protecting their businesses was absorbing costs (46%) and raising prices of their services (38%).
The findings determined that 79% of UK financial institutions are prioritising investment in cloud technologies, while 69% are focusing investment in payments, and 66% on APIs, data science, and AI learning.
60% of UK financial service providers stated they expect the value of the global market to take a dip in the next year. Less than one quarter of UK financial firms have faith in cryptocurrencies.
Peter Left, head of prudential liquidity management at Lloyds, stated: “We can expect a lot of crypto tokens to disappear in the coming months and years. But it's the technology and not the tokens themselves that's the real value add in the crypto space. The mechanism using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) that's been built to facilitate cryptocurrencies is powerful.”