International Journal for Quality Research 11(3) 691–716 ISSN 1800-6450 691 Dalia Suša Vugec 1 Mario Spremić Mirjana Pejić Bach Article info: Received 28.02.2017 Accepted 29.08.2017 UDC – 004:336.7 DOI – 10.18421/IJQR11.03-13 IT GOVERNANCE ADOPTION IN BANKING AND INSURANCE SECTOR: LONGITUDINAL CASE STUDY OF COBIT USE Abstract: For achieving business success and sustainability, companies should increase their focus on aligning business strategy with information technology (IT) governance. Consequently, there has been an increase of interest in IT governance adoption and the usage of COBIT framework. In order to investigate the reasons, ways and differences of COBIT framework implementation in financial sector companies, we have conducted a longitudinal research in form of case studies within two banks and two insurance companies. The results reveal an increase in COBIT maturity levels for all observed companies during the five year period, but with significant differences in the level and speed of its adoption. This research indicate the importance of true strategic IT and business alignment for increasing IT governance maturity and opportunities for business model innovation, which makes the practical contribution of the paper. Keywords: COBIT, IT governance, case study, longitudinal research, financial sector 1. Introduction 1 In the last few decades, information technology (IT) is becoming to have a pivotal role for business success and sustainability in growing number of companies (Soriano et al., 2013; Lunardi et al., 2014; Prasad et al., 2012). In accordance to that, there have been an increasing interest in the way companies could and should manage their IT, which generated a growing body of research focused on IT governance (De Haes et al., 2013). IT governance is the way companies align their business and IT strategy, while taking into consideration 1 Corresponding author: Dalia Suša Vugec email: dsusa@efzg.hr stakeholders’ interests (Schwartz, 2007). Therefore, numerous companies use IT governance as the leverage for creating coordination between IT projects and business goals (Van Grembergen & De Haes, 2012; Ali et al., 2015). Due to importance of IT governance for the improving business performance, the interest in its adoption is also increasing (e.g. Tuttle & Vandervelde, 2007). Two decades ago, ‘Information Systems Audit and Control Association’ (‘ISACA’) created a framework for IT governance adoption called ‘Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology’ (‘COBIT’) which provides a common language for business executives to communicate with each other about IT goals, objectives and results (ISACA, 2016a). The