There is no doubt that cloud offers several benefits for banks – better customer experience, increased security, faster processing, greater scalability, regulatory compliance, and lower costs.
However, it is also no secret that the financial industry has been slow to adopt cloud technology because of concerns around sacrificing legacy on-premises applications and traditional regulatory compliance methods. This is starting to change. More financial players are realising the opportunity that cloud presents to help them meet customer requirements and their business objectives.
Financial institutions are currently working with external cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, but as modernisation and innovation becomes more of a priority in the sector, some banks are owning more of the internal cloud activities within their IT teams. Some have even established a private cloud, with their very own network and data centre. The three areas that financial institutions are currently leveraging cloud for are:
1. Customer experience: Banks use cloud-based systems to track of customer interactions and provide personalised services based on requirements.
2. Data analysis: Banks use cloud for advanced analytics to gain insights into customer behaviour and try to understand how customers use financial products.
3. Fraud detection: Banks use cloud for fraud prevention by analysing large amounts of data from multiple sources, helping financial institutions highlight suspicious activity early.
In the last 6 months, Finextra has covered the biggest bank cloud partnerships. Here are some examples of cloud usage by financial institutions:
But do banks need to use cloud? When using cloud, banks still need to take responsibility and ensure they are always in compliance with regulations, which can be difficult when systems are hosted in the cloud. This loss of control over cloud strategy and will be discussed during the Finextra Financial Cloud Series.
The Finextra Financial Cloud Series will present a step-by-step method for creating a cloud strategy, migrating to the cloud, and optimising cloud processes. In this content series, we will help plug knowledge gaps around the topics of:
- Accelerating digital transformation
- Migrating on-premises compute farms to the cloud
- Leveraging on-demand capacity and scalability
- Adapting to keep pace with unprecedented events
- Governing data and trust through stewardship
In May 2022, the Financial Cloud Series will focus on establishing cloud strategy and providing financial institutions that may have not embarked on their cloud journey with a recipe for success. In September 2022, the series will home in on cloud migration and in November 2022, cloud optimisation, leading to an in-person summit in February 2023.
Contact Freddie.Rand@Finextra.com to get involved.
Watch the first episode in the new Finextra Financial Cloud Series 2022: How to Formulate an Actionable Cloud Strategy.