JP Morgan Chase’s IT Budget Now Twice Nigeria’s Federal Capital Expenditure

Three big global banks, Bank of America, Chase and Santander, have reported that each of them will spend at least $10 billion on IT on the year ahead [Chase specifically is $11.4 billion]. To put that in perspective, Nigeria’s total national budget is about $25 billion. If you remove wages, debt servicing, what Chase spends on IT is more than double what Nigeria spends on infrastructure and broad capital projects.

JPMorgan landed at No. 1 with an $11.4 billion technology budget for the year ahead. That’s a 5.6 percent increase from 2018 figures, with researchers finding nearly half of its technology budget last year was spent on disruptive technology to implement within the institution.

Bank of America has a $10 billion IT spending budget, with 30 percent used for its “technology initiative investment spend,” reports said.

Coming in at No. 3 and No. 4 are Wells Fargo and Citigroup, at about $9 billion and $8 billion in technology budgets, respectively.

Yes, take a look at the 2019 Nigeria budget below and use the black market rate, JP Morgan Chase now spends nearly twice Nigeria’s total capital expenditure on IT. How are you going to argue we are making real progress when one U.S. bank spends double what we put on capital infrastructure? Of course, when you model that we do not even end up funding the whole budget, you will get into the reality that this bank could be spending at least 3 times what we put on bridges, roads and other critical infrastructures in the nation.

Before you begin to throw digital fire, this is not a political hack. Simply, our private sector does not have depth as national budget is always funded by corporations, via taxes. That was a key part of my Platform presentation. Of course, government needs to make the environment enabling.

This is for you to know how much space we need to cover in Nigeria.

*My analysis has not considered purchasing power parity.

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