One of Asia's and Australia's possible competitive advantages in banking is aired in a McKinsey study last month, 'More bank for your IT buck.'Banks in Asia-Pacific are spending significantly less on IT compared with banks elsewhere, the study found.In Asia-Pacific's emerging markets, IT's relative share of operating expenses decreased from an already-low 9.4 per cent in 2010 to 8.1 per cent in 2012. For banks in these markets, the percentages allocated to IT spend ranged from just 3.1 per cent in the bottom quartile of banks in McKinsey's sample to 15 per cent in the top quartile of expenditure on IT, McKinsey said. "This means that the region's emerging-market banks have, on average, not kept their IT spending in line with the overall rise in operating costs. "While the data in our report stretch only until financial year 2012 due to the usual reporting time lags, our subsequent work with Asia-Pacific banks has confirmed these spending patterns and the issues raised by our analysis," it said.In Europe, banks' IT spending averaged about 19 per cent of operating expense across mature and emerging markets in 2011 and 2012.Their peers among Asia-Pacific's 'mature-market' banks have marginally increased their IT spending since 2010, with the average hovering around 15 per cent of operating expense, the report noted.