Procurement teams in financial and professional services are managing a fast-growing technology bill. Enterprise IT spending in banking and investment services is forecast to reach 857.5bUSD in 2026; 76% of financial institutions plan to raise cybersecurity budgets, and IT spend in Sievo's data grew 13.8% year over year in H1 2026.
This article translates 17.7bUSD of anonymized financial and professional services procurement benchmarks from Sievo's State of Spend 2027 into a set of KPIs. It focuses on:
- How your payment terms, PO coverage, and spend per supplier compare with peers
- How much working capital sits in the gap between short and long payment terms
- Which indirect categories to review first in 2027
All benchmarks below are split into top, median, and bottom performers across direct and indirect spend.
Key findings at a glance
- Payment terms: 23 days at total indirect level, the shortest of ten industries and below the cross-industry median in every indirect category.
- PO coverage: 60.9% of total spend, up 2.2 percentage points. On indirect spend, top performers reach 74.7% and bottom performers 27.5%.
- Working capital: closing the bottom-to-top payment-term gap is a theoretical 294mUSD opportunity, with 107mUSD in IT.
- Spend mix: IT (30.4%), Facility Management (22.2%) and Professional Services (18.5%) make up more than 70% of indirect spend.
- Growth: indirect spend rose 4.7% year over year in H1 2026, led by IT (13.8%).
Financial services procurement KPIs at the median
|
KPI (total spend, median)
|
Q3 2025 to Q2 2026
|
Change vs. prior period
|
|
PO coverage
|
60.9%
|
+2.2 pp
|
|
Payment terms
|
23 days
|
−0.9 days
|
|
Due-to-pay
|
8.3 days
|
−2.6 days
|
|
Spend as % of revenue
|
30.8%
|
+1.5 pp
|
|
Spend per invoice
|
3.6kUSD
|
−0.6kUSD
|
|
Spend per supplier
|
104.9kUSD
|
+1.5kUSD
|
PO coverage improved by 2.2 points and spend as a share of revenue rose 1.5 points to 30.8%. Payment terms shortened slightly and companies paid closer to the due date, so the median company's working capital position weakened on both measures.
Top vs. bottom performers in indirect spend
|
Indirect spend KPI
|
Top performers
|
Median
|
Bottom performers
|
|
PO coverage
|
74.7%
|
53.1%
|
27.5%
|
|
Payment terms
|
28.2 days
|
22.7 days
|
21.5 days
|
|
Due-to-pay
|
10.2 days
|
8.4 days
|
5.1 days
|
|
Spend per invoice
|
16.7kUSD
|
5.1kUSD
|
3.1kUSD
|
|
Spend per supplier
|
150.1kUSD
|
103.6kUSD
|
49.6kUSD
|
Top and bottom performers are the 75th and 25th percentiles of the peer cohort on each metric. Direct spend is far more uniform: top performers reach 94.4% PO coverage against a 68.7% median, and payment terms span only 24.2 to 26.3 days.
Takeaway for 2027: the spread sits in indirect spend. With PO coverage ranging from 27.5% to 74.7%, peers are running the same categories very differently, so benchmark yours category by category.
Payment terms by category
The industry trails the cross-industry median in every indirect category and has the shortest terms in 9 of 10. The largest gaps are in MRO (27 days vs. 43) and Logistics (20 days vs. 33).
|
Indirect category
|
F&PS median payment terms
|
Gap vs. cross-industry median
|
|
IT
|
28.2 days
|
−12.1 days
|
|
MRO
|
26.9 days
|
−16.1 days
|
|
Professional Services
|
22.1 days
|
−9.5 days
|
|
Facility Management
|
19.9 days
|
−12.2 days
|
|
Logistics
|
19.7 days
|
−13.2 days
|
If bottom performers matched top performers' terms, the cohort would theoretically release 294mUSD across 14.0bUSD of analyzed indirect spend: IT 107mUSD, Facility Management 57mUSD, Professional Services 44mUSD, HR & Benefits 31mUSD, and Marketing 26mUSD lead.
Short payment terms are not automatically a problem; some companies accept them in exchange for better pricing, early-payment discounts, or other commercial benefits.
Takeaway for 2027: separate the short terms that buy something from the ones that are simply supplier defaults. Start with IT, Facility Management and Professional Services, where the working capital pools are largest.
PO coverage by category
Financial and professional services leads the cross-industry median on PO coverage in only 4 of 10 indirect categories: Travel (+7.9 pp), Professional Services (+4.9 pp), Energy & Utilities (+2.8 pp) and Logistics (+1.5 pp). The widest gaps are in MRO, Fleet and Facility Management.
|
Indirect category
|
F&PS median PO coverage
|
Gap vs. cross-industry median
|
|
IT
|
71.7%
|
−3.3 pp
|
|
MRO
|
61.8%
|
−21.2 pp
|
|
Facility Management
|
49.1%
|
−8.3 pp
|
|
Professional Services
|
45.6%
|
+4.9 pp
|
|
Fleet
|
15.9%
|
−17.4 pp
|
Where indirect spend goes and grows
|
Indirect category
|
Share of indirect spend
|
Spend as % of revenue (median)
|
H1 2026 vs. H1 2025
|
|
Information Technology
|
30.4%
|
4.0%
|
+13.8%
|
|
Facility Management
|
22.2%
|
2.1%
|
+5.2%
|
|
Professional Services
|
18.5%
|
4.2%
|
−2.7%
|
|
HR & Benefits
|
10.8%
|
1.7%
|
+3.9%
|
|
Marketing
|
7.3%
|
0.8%
|
−5.0%
|
Spend intensity varies widely. Bottom performers spend 11.4% of revenue on IT and 9.5% on Professional Services, against 2.0% and 0.8% for top performers. Part of that is deliberate: firms may elevate IT and advisory spend to support regulatory compliance, risk management and digital client channels.
IT growth came from IT hardware (+22.5%) and software (+21.1%), offsetting an 11.9% decline in telecommunications. The supply base is also more fragmented than peers': the top 20 suppliers hold less spend than the cross-industry median in 6 of 10 indirect categories, most clearly in Professional Services (49.1%, −13.5 pp), Marketing (−8.4 pp) and IT (−8.3 pp).
Takeaway for 2027: track IT hardware and software prices separately from telecom, and review the supplier tail in Professional Services, Marketing and IT, where the report sees room for vendor consolidation.
Get the full report
The full State of Spend 2027: Financial & Professional Services report includes the complete KPI tables, category-level PO coverage and payment terms, the working capital opportunity by category and quarterly spend indexes from Q1 2023 to Q2 2026. Download State of Spend 2027: Financial & Professional Services [link to the report landing page], or see the same benchmarks against your own categories, countries and suppliers in Sievo Community Data [link to the Community Data page].
About the data: Sievo's opt-in, anonymized, aggregated and cleansed procurement data for financial and professional services, Q3 2025 to Q2 2026, compared with Q3 2024 to Q2 2025. How the benchmarks are built: [link to series methodology page]
