IMPACT OF INVESTMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY ON THE PROFITABILITY OF THE BRAZILIAN BANKING SECTOR

Six out of ten bank transactions in Brazil were carried out through smartphones and computers in 2018 and mobile banking accounted for 40% of the total number of bank transactions. The popularization of the use of these new channels and technologies is the result of expenses and billionaire investments in technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, blockchain and robotics, for example. However, there are frequent reports in the literature about the impact of these investments on the financial performance of organizations, as well as various results, which sometimes point to the beneficial impact of IT investments on financial performance and sometimes point to the lack of relationship. between these variables. In this sense, the present study analyzes whether investments in technology made by the five largest Brazilian banks between 2009 and 2018 positively impacted their profitability, more specifically the Return on Assets (ROA). Through correlation and regression of panel data, the study found that there is a positive correlation between IT investments and ROA of the analyzed banks and that the participation of IT investments in total and operating costs increased the ROA