We tracked activated software assets, operating expenses, cost-income ratios and personnel costs across 60+ Swiss banks from 2019 to 2024. Three tell the story. Click any dot to explore.
Banks don't disclose IT budgets. But Swiss accounting standards (FINMA Circular 2020/1 and the Banking Ordinance) require every bank to report activated software on the balance sheet and software-related operating expenses in the income statement. These aren't estimates, they're audited numbers that reflect actual capitalized development and recurring technology spend.
This is exactly what the OECD measures at the macro level. Their 2024 working paper on financial sector digitalization (No. 1818) identifies two channels of digital penetration: ICT investment (what you build and capitalize) and ICT intermediate consumption (what you spend to run). Neither alone tells the story. A bank can spend heavily on licenses without building anything, or capitalize aggressively while outsourcing all operations. Both channels together reveal the actual digital intensity.
The Swiss annual report maps directly onto this framework. Activated software assets correspond to ICT investment. Software operating expenses (licenses, SaaS subscriptions, external IT services) correspond to ICT intermediate consumption. Together, they form a bank-level digital intensity signal that is public, audited, and comparable.
McKinsey's Global Banking IT Benchmark finds that financial institutions spend 6–12% of revenues on technology, more than any other industry. But the range is enormous: top performers spend less as a share of revenue while delivering more digital capability. The key distinction isn't how much you spend, it's whether spending translates into structural efficiency or just keeps the lights on.
That's what this chart tracks. The x-axis measures how much each bank commits to software (both building and running). The y-axis measures whether it shows up in the numbers that matter: cost ratios and personnel costs. Some banks move right and up, investing more and getting more efficient. Others move right and stay flat, spending more with nothing to show for it. And some barely move at all.