Trends in retail banking and their impact on bank’s IT architecture

The theme of this thesis are trends in retail banking and their impact on bank's IT architecture. The history teaches us that the ability to catch trends quickly and to use them can bring significant competitive advantage. At the same time some trends may pose a threat to the company and their (trends) early detection may prevent later problems. It is therefore important to monitor trends and evaluate their impact on bank's business. Roughly half of the overall bank costs consists of IT costs which are determined by IT architecture of the bank. Bank's IT is defined by IT architecture so it is useful to consider examining the impact of trends to the IT architecture. The aim of this thesis is to identify impact of trends in retail banking on bank's IT architecture. In the first part I analyze trends in retail banking in order to find out which are the key. In the next section I compare different reference IT architectures. Subsequently at the most appropriate architecture I identify impact of trends in retail banking on bank's IT architecture. Banks that perceive trends mentioned in this thesis as important and at the same time have similar architecture which I describe in this thesis may use my findings to gain competitive advantage or to take measures necessary to mitigate risks which are connected with coming trends which can have a negative impact on banks.