Mumbai: According to a recently-released Skoch Consultancy report banks and financial institutions in India are expected to invest more than $2 billion (Rs8,200 crore) by December end to upgrade their information technology (IT) infrastructure -- an 18 per cent increase over last year''s spend of $1.7 billion.

By 2010, this figure is expected to touch around $3.5 billion. The areas include customer relationship management (CRM), human resources management (HRM), business intelligence (BI) and data mining kind of applications and services, the report said. The spend on core banking software packages, on the other hand, registered a slower growth last financial year. It grew lower than 10 per cent while still accounting for more than 50 per cent of packaged software spending of $263 million (around Rs1,080 crore) in 2006-07.