The only constant is change, goes the familiar saying, and change is upon us, according to industry analysts. At the beginning of 2005, U.S. financial services institutions are at an IT spending crossroads, writes TowerGroup senior analyst Virginia Garcia. Many U.S. financial services firms are making organic growth and operational efficiency their top management priorities. IT transformation is urgently needed for both, even more so under the emerging view that organic growth and operational efficiency pursuits should go hand-in-glove. In terms of insurance through 2008, Garcia predicts, Key IT spending priorities for carriers will include legacy transformation in pursuit of flexible enterprise architectures, the auto-mation and streamlining of underwriting, fraud detection and prevention, and customer segmentation and knowledge.

A recent IT industry report from research firm IDC picks up on the infrastructure refresh theme for financial services. In conclusion, it also lists emerging technologies worth watching such as the semantic Web, which it defines as allowing for the aggregation of data from different XML databases using standardized definitions, conversion schemes, and naming conventions. In 2005, well begin to hear more about it, the report promises (for more on newer technologies insurers are assessing now, see The Right Connections, p. 14).

All this innovation sounds great, but it ignores one essential componentpeople. The stimulation of change may be a factor in keeping technologists in the IT field, but often change isnt in general easily embraced.