Posted by Bangalore: $1.8 million per hour – that’s the staggering cost of high-impact IT outages for financial services companies, reveals a new report released by New Relic, the intelligent observability company.
The new report, Observability Forecast for Financial Services, uncovers how the industry is adopting observability in response to frequent IT outages, increasing enterprise AI usage, and regulatory, security, modernisation, and competitive pressures.
Frequent downtime erodes revenue and productivity
Financial services companies report that high-impact IT outages cost $1.8 million per hour on average, in line with the cross-industry average of $1.7 million per hour, the report states.
Outages are also frequent in this industry, with 29% of respondents reporting high business impact outages at least weekly, only slightly lower than the all-industry average of 35%.
Network failures are the most common culprit of outages (37%), followed by software deployment issues (34%) and changes made to the environment (32%).
Beyond the financial drain, engineering teams spend on average 31% of their time addressing disruptions, taking their attention away from business innovation, as per the report.
AI, security and compliance require observability
While financial services companies are not traditionally first movers on new technology adoption, the data shows they are starting to leverage AI, leading to observability adoption.
AI monitoring deployment in this industry stands at 50%, just a few points shy of the cross-industry average of 54% using the capability, the report reveals.
Thirty-eight percent of financial services organisations cite AI as a primary driver for observability adoption, the second most cited driver after security, governance, risk, and compliance.
Nearly half of respondents (47%) said observability helps their organisation prepare for and manage AI application development and AI deployment.
Financial services companies prioritise flawless digital experiences
Thirty-three percent of industry respondents, 8 points above the cross-industry average, say increasing demands on improving customer experiences make robust observability a priority.
Recognising the link between customer loyalty, seamless mobile banking performance and digital interactions, financial services companies are prioritising digital experience monitoring (DEM) in future plans.
In the next one to three years, 89% of respondents plan to deploy browser monitoring, 80% plan to deploy mobile monitoring, and 77% plan to deploy synthetic monitoring.
“Across the Asia Pacific, financial services organisations are operating in one of the most tightly regulated and digitally demanding environments in the world,” said Rob Newell, SVP and GM – APJ, New Relic.
“From real-time payments to always-on mobile banking, customers expect flawless performance and regulators expect resilience,” added Newell.
According to Newell, the report data shows that observability has become critical for financial institutions in the region, helping them reduce the impact of outages, modernise with confidence, and adopt AI responsibly.
“In 2026, it’s no longer just a technical capability; it’s a business imperative for protecting trust while enabling innovation at scale,” concluded Newell.
About 156 IT and engineering leaders at financial services companies, including banks, financial technology, insurance companies, investment firms, and credit unions shared their insights. The report is based on data from New Relic’s 2025 Observability Forecast.