Mumbai– IT spending by banking and securities firms in India will reach $7.8 billion in 2017, an increase of 8.6 per cent from 2016, a new report said on Thursday.

This forecast provides total enterprise IT spending for internal spending and spending data on data centre, devices, software, IT services and telecom services, said the market research firm Gartner.

“The banking and securities industry is increasingly working towards investing in core banking solutions to transform the legacy systems,” said Moutusi Sau, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, in a statement.

IT services and software will be the fastest growing segments at 12.6 per cent in 2017 as firms in the banking and securities industry invest more in applications and business processes, specifically in business process outsourcing (BPO), the report said.