72% of your IT budget may never build anything new. Find your number.
Banks will spend $857B on technology in 2026 — and still direct two-thirds of it to simply running legacy systems.
See what that's costing yours, and get the one-page case to change it.
67%
67% of the average bank IT budget goes to "run-the-bank" maintenance — only ~11% to true innovation (Gartner / industry benchmark)
10-20%
surcharge on every new project just to work around technical debt (McKinsey)
5–10¢
of every technology dollar actually creates new business value (McKinsey)
$857.5B
total banking IT spend forecast for 2026, up 9.5% in a single year (Gartner)
The most expensive number in your budget is the one no one adds up
Run-the-bank costs don't sit on a single line. They're scattered across maintenance contracts, vendor management, integration work, and compliance remediation, which is exactly why most banks never see the total.
When you finally add it up, the figure surprises the executive team.
More budget hasn't meant more capability.
Banking technology spend is rising fast, but McKinsey finds technical debt now accounts for roughly 40% of the entire IT balance sheet, and only 5 to 10 cents of every dollar ends up creating new value. The rest is absorbed keeping yesterday's systems alive.
This calculator pulls that scattered cost onto one line, in about five minutes, using published benchmarks you can defend in a budget review.
What the calculator gives you
Your misallocation figure
A single annual dollar number: run-the-bank tax + the hidden tech-debt surcharge + delivery drag — the spend tied up running the past.
A "% of budget locked" read
See what share of your budget is actually available for new product, regulatory work, and AI — benchmarked against McKinsey's 5–10¢ finding.
A board-ready one-pager
Download The CIO's One-Page Board Memo — a fill-in template that converts your figure into the five-line case a finance committee approves.
Defensible benchmarks
Every assumption is sourced (Gartner, McKinsey, IBM) and editable, so the output holds up when the CFO asks where the numbers came from.
Calculate your cost of standing still
Enter four figures you already know: annual IT budget, the share spent running existing systems, new-project spend, and how many releases legacy delayed last year. We apply the benchmarks and return your number instantly.
Total technology budget for the year, in USD.
Keeping existing systems alive (maintenance, support, infrastructure). Industry benchmark ≈ 67%.
Budget for new product, capability, and AI work this year. If unsure, use 'grow + innovate' ≈ 33% of total.
Roughly how many planned releases slipped half a year or more because of legacy constraints last year.
Waiting one more budget cycle is the most expensive decision you can make.
Three years ago, deferring modernization was defensible — tooling was immature and talent was easier to find. Neither still holds.
AI-assisted modernization is now production-grade for regulated, legacy-heavy environments, and the specialist talent pool keeps shrinking as banking IT spend climbs and headcount growth collapses from 6% to 2%.
The honest comparison is no longer "do nothing vs. take a risk." It's the risk of acting vs. the risk of waiting — and every quarter of delay moves the math in the wrong direction. Run your number, then take the one-page case into your next budget review.
Up to 70%
of IT budget freed from technical-debt drag when the right layer is modernized first (Accenture 2026)
3–4 months
to ship on modern architecture, versus 9–18 months on legacy (McKinsey)
90 days
is all it takes to prove the model with a bounded pilot — no multi-year program required
Want the full research behind the benchmarks?
This calculator is a companion to The Cost of Standing Still: What Legacy Systems Are Really Costing US Financial Institutions in 2026 — Devsu's research ebook quantifying the five hidden costs of legacy systems with data from McKinsey, Gartner, Deloitte, IBM, the OCC, and the NCUA, plus four real engagement stories.
About Devsu
Devsu is an AI-native engineering and system-intelligence partner for US financial institutions. We help banks understand their systems and modernize around them — bounded, governed, and built so your team owns the outcome. No rip-and-replace, no permanent vendor dependency. A decade of engineering excellence, teams across the Americas, trusted by industry leaders.
Trusted by Industry Leaders
Benchmarks: Gartner Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for Banking & Investment Services, Worldwide (Q4 2025) and IT-budget allocation benchmarks; McKinsey Unlocking value from technology in banking and Breaking technical debt's vicious cycle; Accenture 2026 banking technology research; IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025. Figures are directional, for internal planning and board discussion.
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