BANKS THAT INVEST MORE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE EFFICIENCY INDICATOR

Investments in information technology have become relevant in several sectors and this paper will focus on the banking sector. Some decades ago, Brazilian banks have emerged as major investors in information technology (IT). This paper aims to identify whether the banks that invest more in IT have better efficiency indicator (EI) than other banks, being EI the division of personnel and administrative expenses by the revenue from services and financial intermediation. The nonparametric test Mann-Whitney was used to analyze the data with a significance level of 5%. Despite the difficulty to quantify and allocate the benefits of investments in information technology on business performance, the analysis in this study showed that the group of banks that invests more in IT has better EI compared to other banks in the period from 2006 until 2008. Keywords: banks, information technology, efficiency, indicator, Mann-Whitney.