The Cloud and the future of finance

A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of co-authoring a short article on the adoption of the Cloud in Financial Services with Professor Nelson Phillips of the Imperial College Business School.

We conducted several interviews with senior leaders in financial services about their experiences of moving to the Cloud. It turned out to be such a captivating journey that Nelson and I are planning to continue along this path and turn it into a much more comprehensive piece of research.

Nelson Phillips, my co-author of ‘Coronavirus,
or how finance learned to stop worrying and love
the cloud’ and further research forthcoming

Our continued research will provide insights for Board Members and the C-Suite in financial institutions. As a key consideration, we have identified the key strategic enablers to successful Cloud adoption. This, we posit, will lead not only to cost savings on infrastructure but to increased resilience in the financial sector as well as innovation. My recent experience of applying for a mortgage for a holiday residence in the South of France made it clear — the industry can do better!

This research brought me back to ‘The Future of Finance’ report, the review of the UK’s financial system chaired by Huw van Steenis at the request of the Governor of the Bank of England (BoE). The ‘Cloud’ makes a total of 128 appearances in Huw’s report and it recommends that the Bank of England embrace it, “The Bank should embrace cloud technologies, which have matured to the point they can meet the high expectations of regulators and financial services. It offers the advantages of business agility, faster innovation and cyber-defences to provide better services to households and businesses.”

The research that we conducted, Nelson and I, and the direct experience of my colleagues in Alpha Reply (Cloud technology consulting and application development), Cluster Reply (global award-winning Azure experts), Go Reply (GCP Premier Partner), Spike Reply (Cloud Security), and Storm Reply (AWS Premier Consulting Partner) corroborate Huw’s analysis: “Cloud technology is increasingly mainstream.”

The Bank of England created a report in response to The Future of Finance titled, “New economy, new finance, new Bank: The Bank of England’s response to the van Steenis review on the Future of Finance.”

The report includes a stream of work focused on facilitating greater resilience and adoption of the Cloud and other new technologies. It highlights the risks and benefits of Cloud computing for the financial system, including technology infrastructure, cost reduction, and other benefits that the Cloud offers.

The risk and benefits of cloud computing for the financial system from page 10
of the BoE report “New economy, new finance, new Bank.”

The Bank of England response notes that “the Bank will always demand that any changes to core infrastructure are robust and resilient. But it also recognises the potential cyber and operational benefits cloud-based models can bring, particularly for smaller firms. By reducing time to market and increasing agility, these models may also offer the potential to create a more diverse financial system.”

Interestingly, whilst not disagreeing on the benefits for smaller firms, our research and work note that the Cloud brings significant benefits to larger firms, too, starting with significant reductions in infrastructure costs. What’s more, we have found that, for those that go about it strategically, the Cloud can help fuel innovation in large firms and accelerate time to market.

To broaden awareness of these benefits, we are launching a series of 10 webinars to discuss strategic themes that Board Members and the C-Suite should consider when evaluating how their firm should embrace the Cloud.

I’d like to invite you to join us and our guest speakers from the financial industry as well as other sectors, starting on Friday 15 May, 2020 (10:00AM BST, 11:00AM CET). You will benefit from the lessons learned and, importantly, can put your questions to our panel!

I look forward to you joining us then. Please feel free to register here.