New Relic: Outages cost financial firms $2.2 million per hour, AI drives observability shift

Bangalore, India – April 30, 2025 — A new report from New Relic reveals that high-impact IT outages cost financial services and insurance firms an average of $2.2 million per hour, underscoring the urgent need for AI-driven observability across the sector.

Based on insights from New Relic’s 2024 Observability Forecast, the report highlights that 48% of respondents in the financial sector experience high-business-impact outages at least once a week, more frequently than any other industry. Despite significant technology investments, outages remain difficult to detect and resolve, with mean time to detection at 42 minutes and resolution taking 58 minutes on average.

“Reliability, security, and efficiency are no longer technical goals — they’re business imperatives,” said Nic Benders, Chief Technical Strategist at New Relic. “Observability is helping enterprises tackle tool sprawl, mitigate outages, and modernize legacy systems, all while meeting evolving regulatory demands.”

The report finds that AI adoption is increasingly ...