By Karen Massey, IDC Financial Insights

On September 11, 2017, the IDC Financial Insights team proudly announced the 2017 IDC FinTech Rankings Top 100 and Enterprise Top 25, and the Real Results winners at Finovate Fall NYC. In its 14th year, the IDC FinTech Rankings takes the opportunity annually to recognize those technology providers that are tirelessly working to provide solutions that solve our industry’s most pressing concerns.

Currently the focus is on transformation – what’s the strategy, who are the most qualified providers, and how do we get to the “Connected Financial Institution?” Digital Transformation (DX) is especially at the forefront of technology discussions, as it should be considering IDC believes that financial institutions will spend more than US$170 billion worldwide on DX, including both 3^rd party and internal IT resources, in 2018, on a total IT spend of $450 billion worldwide. Also of interest is that revenue from financial institutions from the 125 companies on the IDC FinTech Rankings is just over US$175 billion, which is almost 60% of WW third party IT spend.

The top honors belong to FIS this year after a successful integration of SunGard throughout 2016. The Top 10 is rounded out with TCS, Fiserv, Cognizant, NTT DATA, Diebold Nixdorf, Infosys, NCR, TSYS, and Nomura Research Institute. The mid-2016 merger of Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf moved the combined organization squarely into the Top 10, with more upward potential in 2018 with a full year of combined revenue in 2017. The Finastra combination of D+H and Misys could make a run for the Top 10 in the coming years after the mid-2017 transaction.

The Enterprise Top 25 experienced a bit of a shake up this year as well after being a relatively stable list for several years. IBM has held the top spot for the duration of the IDC FinTech Rankings, followed by Accenture, Cisco, Microsoft, and Dell. The HPE spin off moved HPE outside the top 10 making room for both Accenture and Cisco to jump a few spots on successful financial performance. Hitachi debuted in the top 10 this year, moving up four spots.

The IDC FinTech Rankings also saw many Newcomers this year, demonstrating their growing importance in the financial services technology ecosystem, as well as several companies that moved up several spots on the list, we call them Rising Stars, most of the moves due to organic growth. We’ll explore those in a separate blog.

We also had five winners in our third year of the IDC FTR Real Results program, which recognizes IT providers that have enabled a genuine, measurable, and future-enabling change at a client financial institution in the worldwide financial services industry. The Real Results will also be detailed in an upcoming blog.