Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,4, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (Business), language: English, abstract: In the past 30 years' information technology has had a widespread presence in many industries. Since the 1980s about half of all major capital investments in firms have been information technology based. The competitive nature of the economic business world has tremendously increased due to technological advancements. Additionally, Taylor suggests that research has proven that technology is a critical factor in the development of strategies for firms. Technology has allowed improvements to firm processes and enables firms to operate efficiently and profitably.In broad, technology has transformed various industries, with the financial services industry being one of the industries experiencing pervasive technological disruption and advancement. In the last ten years, the financial services industry has experienced a significant increase in technology based services delivery. In fact, in 2002 Freedman and Goodlet identified technological change to be one of the key factors driving the development in the financial services industry.