Moving Forward: Emerging Themes in Financial Services Technologies' Adoption

Financial services technologies (FST) are core to the continuous transformation of financial services organizations (FSO). To date, however, there has been a lack of empirical research into FST adoption against the backdrop of the recent financial crisis. The aim of this article is to re-examine how FSO are currently positioned to take advantage of emerging FST. We emphasize that this article is forward looking rather than providing a commentary on the state-ofthe-art in technology adoption research. This research has been conducted by applying an exploratory qualitative study method where interview transcripts from thirty recent interviews of FSO technology executives and CIOs were analysed by using a thematic network analysis tool. This analysis uncovered nineteen basic, eight organizing and two global FST adoption research themes along with their links to FST adoption objectives; challenges; customer centricity; human resources; outsourcing; and overall IT strategy maintenance. This research has both practical and theoretical research implications serving as a resource base for FSO and researchers to set future research priorities and directions. Emerging themes presented in this article are intended to facilitate research directions by shedding light on the areas of greatest value and potential return in FST adoption.