In Focus: Cloud for FSI

SLA-Ready will deliver a use case in the financial sector, public sector and small businesses use cases in mid-2016. Here we take a snapshot of how the cloud is being used in the financial sector, where digital transformation is seen as a global challenge by the World Economic Forum. 

FSI companies have only recently come round to the idea of using cloud-based services. In what is a highly regulated sector, security and privacy are imperative with industry auditor visits up to every 28 months. Both these aspects are remain a stumbling block for many with breaches potentially devastating for customers, shareholders, company officials, and employees.

 

Below is a snapshot of how the finance sector is using the cloud today. Any specific reference to a cloud service provider is given as an example and does not constitute an endorsement.

 

Leeds Building Society has embarked on a long-term digital service strategy to expand and improve customer services. The drive towards cloud-based online and mobile banking services marks an important move away from traditional service that is predominantly branch-based to meet changing customer needs. 

 

The financial institution needs a strong online presence or an omni-channel capability, capable of integrating the newer digital channels with the more traditional ones. This need is prevalent across the whole industry and other sectors too.  The set of tools and technologies from HP will be used to change the way the company handles requests from mortgage applicants and customers who hold savings accounts, adopting a phased rollout approach rather than a big-bang deployment.

 

A cloud-first approach, wherever this makes sense, is about being flexible and responsive so services can evolve as more of the infrastructure moves off-premise over time. The cloud provides a level of resilience and business continuity, as well as more security and protection than Leeds Building Society could achieve by itself. This is a view the financial services community is slowly starting to share, as a mood change starts to take hold with more people in the sector realising that some of their concerns around security are better addressed through the cloud than through traditional solutions. 

 

 

Bankinter, is listed as one of the top ten banks in Spain, has been providing online banking services since 1996, when it pioneered real-time stock market operations. More than 60% of Bankinter transactions are performed through remote channels, and 46% of those transactions are performed over the Internet. It uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of their credit-risk simulation application, developing complex algorithms to simulate diverse scenarios needed to evaluate the financial health of its customers. To get realistic results, the bank performs at least 5,000,000 simulations.  Bankinter uses the flexibility and power of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to perform these simulations, sub-dividing processes through a grid of AWS EC2 instances, and implementing simulations in parallel on several EC2 instances to get results in a very short time span. 

 

With the cloud, Bankinter has reduced the average time-to-solution from 23 hours to 20 minutes. The bank has also dramatically reduced processing and costs, and has the capability to make further reductions when needed.

The unlimited and flexible computational power of the AWS platform is a good fit for the risk-simulation process requirements. Another important advantage is the ability to decide just how quickly the bank needs to get results. However, the top benefit is being able to run simulations that were just not possible before because of the large amount of infrastructure required.

 

 

Finance company ING is using cloud-based software from ServiceNow to deliver HR services to its 25,000 staff in the Netherlands. ServiceNow and ING built a branded portal to give staff access to information as well as automating previously manual tasks. The bank previously used callcentres and face-to-face interactions for most HR enquiries.

 

A self-service portal gives employees access to a knowledge base with over 1,200 articles on topics such as health and compensation.

ING automated manual HR processes and there is now one system of record after ServiceNow software was integrated into the company’s existing HR system.

ING’s HR department has improved user satisfaction, and reduced the cost and time of providing services.

Automation opportunities mean that employees have much of the information they need right at their fingertips, significantly increasing employee satisfaction and dramatically reducing the number of steps taken for information to be accessed.

The implementation project took three months. A quick turnaround is important at large organisations such as banks, because there are times of the year when system use peaks. One IT professional in the banking sector said that, if you miss targets, delays can be big. 

 

Metrobank is driving a revolution in banking based on a customer-first approach/customer-centric culture. Debit cards are issued on the spot. The bank counts coins for free. Open seven days a week, early and late because they realise they have to be available when the customer needs them. 

When moving to the cloud, a key requirement was having the same devices that staff members are using at home to ensure seamless. MetroBank uses Microsoft Dynamics for its customer relationship management and Lync to surf staff online presence to guarantee 24/7 customer service. Office 365 is the backbone for its office infrastructure. The Microsoft cloud technology and stack will become central to the bank’s customer-centric culture. The investment in Dynamics is all about bringing that promise to life. The bank uses Net Breeze for customer engagement. Video

 

Secure Use of Cloud Computing in the Finance Sector Good practices and recommendations

Published in December 2015 by the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) this report provides a set of recommendations for financial institutions, industry regulators and cloud service providers (or their brokers) to overcome the barriers to cloud service adoption within the sector. The recommendations cover four key areas: co-operation, risk-based approach, transparency and assurance, and information campaigns. Find out more here.