Globally, financial services firms’ engagement with the cloud is accelerating. Whether firms are performing trading analytics, deploying more sophisticated risk management models, automating compliance tasks, or delivering a new cloud-based wealth management customer portal, they are increasingly moving data, analytics, business processes and more to the cloud.
LSEG recently undertook a survey of 453 financial services executives who are involved in decision-making for financial market data and IT solutions. This survey provides insight into how banks, investment organizations and wealth and advisory firms are shaping their cloud strategies.
Specific areas include:
- Current and anticipated cloud strategies and investment
- Cloud adoption maturity and challenges in realizing ROI
- The impact of data security, privacy and sovereignty regulations on cloud strategies
- The importance of operational resilience and approaches taken
- Engagement with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI)
Respondents confirmed the rapid evolution of cloud strategies as firms seek to adapt to emerging use cases, identified challenges such as regulatory complexity, and pointed to the potential for fresh opportunities to create value. Although implementing the cloud does usually result in cost reduction, in terms of ROI this was less of a priority than boosting firms’ competitive advantage.
The survey shows that there is not a single cloud adoption pathway. Firms are at different stages of their cloud journeys, with varying use case priorities, challenges, and interests in data types. Yet, there is much that can be learned from the trends identified in this survey’s responses.
Investing heavily in cloud services
Financial services firms are investing significantly in moving data, processes, analytics and more to cloud service providers (CSPs), effectively outsourcing their technology infrastructure. It is easy to see why this is such a popular strategy – moving to the cloud quickly delivers benefits for most firms. These benefits include boosting competitiveness through increased agility, revenue growth, enhanced transparency for customers, and more. Firms are viewing reduced infrastructure costs as just an added bonus.
