Many technologists at financial services firms are concerned about how to advocate for the high cost of tech investment in the face of potential economic downturn.

I feel like I always operate in a recession, Robert Candler, the head of digital client strategy at Bernstein Private Wealth Management, told the audience at InVest|West.

Ron Shevlin, managing director of fintech research at Cornerstone Advisors, estimates U.S. banks have spent $67 billion overall on tech budgets.

Meanwhile, integrating increasingly advanced technology onto existing bank infrastructure is getting tougher.

Kabir Sethi, director of digital wealth management at Merrill Lynch, provided an anecdote to the audience to explain: The project to build a new onboarding system for its digital platform at his firm took more than a year and 130 staff.

No financial services firm can avoid such investment, though, as it will be critical to leaner and more efficient operations, according to a new study from Accenture.

U.S. and Canadian banks could save more than $70 billion through 2025 using technology to automate jobs or assist employees, the firm found, according to Bloomberg News.

As part of tackling costs and investment, banks will have to rethink the resource allocation discussion, said Anton Honikman, chief executive of MyVest, an enterprise wealth management platform provider owned by the insurance giant TIAA.

"It's a real challenge," Honikman said. "They must ask, does our organizational design and structure hold back progress? Firms not only are organized a certain way, but their budgets are allocated in that same way, teams are formed that way, and data structure is ordered to support those fiefdoms."

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