MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: In contrast to the rest of the world, Australian banking community is handling the current crisis reasonably well.

Jens Butler, principal analyst, IT Services Asia-Pacific, Ovum, said: "Discretionary spend may be falling off the cliff, but focus on core banking replacement programmes, ensuring that the existing infrastructure maintains its availability and adherence to regulatory requirements, will keep the resources flowing in this direction. And this is in turn creating a pressure to find the right skills and experience."

The problem maps back to an issue that has been impacting not just the banking and finance sector, but all industries in Australia over five years, that is resourcing. Even with slowdowns, there are still scarcity of skilled resources available and there has been a recent up-tick in recruitment agency activity for the required skill sets.

Given the loss of up to 3,50,000 banking jobs worldwide, there may be global resources available. With sufficient foresight and planning, there should be sufficient available quality supply to enable all major players to undertake their range of transformation and integration programs, if all major internal and external factors are managed accordingly.