Cloud adoption is at the heart of the digital transformation initiatives across most UK-based financial services firms. Cloud computing has proved to be a cost-effective strategy for increasing service delivery and innovation. It is an enabler of well-engineered foundations for a more manageable and simpler technology environment. Successful cloud migration based on a well-defined value proposition yields tremendous business benefits. In particular, the cloud introduces unprecedented opportunities for financial series firms, which include:

• Enabling financial organisations to stream and acquire real-time market data into large databases. The cloud’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities permit firms to model big data to quantify market trends.

• Leveraging cloud technologies to enable risk assessment for financial institutions to determine exposure and liquidity and perform market-to-market adjustments accurately.

• Allowing financial companies to model and create experiences tailored to resemble the best industry-standard digital deployments. Digital savvy financial firms use cloud solutions to analyse and process large data sets to create and sell innovative financial products that compete effectively in the highly competitive financial industry.

• Financial institutions leverage the scaling and robustness of the cloud infrastructure, service-level agreements, and high availability to address changing customer needs and behaviours while ensuring minimal service disruptions.

The Current Cloud Adoption Rate in UK Financial Services

A 2021 survey found that at least half of UK financial services firms’ cloud adoption initiatives were not impacted by the global pandemic. The survey revealed that almost a third of UK financial companies accelerated cloud adoption to enable remote working strategies to ensure high productivity and implement strategic, innovative programs, such as customer service chat-bots and mobile banking apps. In addition, PwC’s 2021 Global Digital Trust Insights showed that only 6% of UK companies fully realise the benefits of cloud adoption, including enhanced productivity.

Also, more than a quarter of UK-based banks have implemented plans for migrating more than 50% of their critical business operations to the cloud, while in the last two years, where 80% had migrated 10% of their business to the cloud. Unsurprisingly, the myriad of beneficial cloud solutions has seen an increased cloud adoption rate in the financial sector. 

Cloud Adoption Enhances Productivity

Cloud adoption assists financial services in streamlining critical operations and processes to enhance productivity. For example, adopting the cloud can enable companies to bring sellers and buyers together on a central platform to simplify data tracking and speed up payment processing, resulting in increased productivity. In addition, adopting cloud solutions can increase productivity in the following ways:

1. Business Growth

The primary motivator for adopting the cloud is it enables financial services firms to grow and adapt to the evolving market landscape. Specifically, financial organisations host crucial operations in the cloud, enabling them to meet them to support market initiatives and comply with new market demands continually. For example, financial companies collect vast amounts of data daily, and the associated data processing restrictions make it hard to replicate services and offerings in-house due to the inability to scale. By adopting cloud solutions, financial services firms can leverage the cloud’s scalability and flexibility to ensure optimum productivity in an increasingly customer-centric, fast-paced market. In addition, the cloud’s ability to reorganise the financial services pipeline empowers firms to scale their processing capabilities, resulting in increased productivity.

2. Synergising Operations

Migrating financial services firms’ operations to the cloud provides companies with a powerful strategy for modernising operations to keep up with the rapidly changing financial industry. With the help of a proven cloud service provider, cloud adoption ensures that the cloud solution you adopt aligns with your business needs, creating an operational synergy. For example, financial institutions can leverage the cloud’s capabilities to minimise the time needed to complete new product development cycles, enabling them to release innovations in real-time.

At the same time, the ability to host business data remotely permits banks to harness and capture customer data with a high level of personalisation that cannot be realised in on-premise infrastructure deployment. At the touch of a button, financial organisations can utilise the cloud’s advanced intelligent analytics to help employees understand and gain deeper insights into current and new customer profiles. Derivations from these insights can increase productivity by informing decisions required to provide better customer services, boost long-term retention and engagement, and enhance conversion rates.

3. Encourages Employee Cooperation

The financial services industry can encourage employees to collaborate on key projects from different locations using different devices. In the current landscape where financial organisations have adopted remote and hybrid working methods, fostering employee collaboration and coordination is vital to implementing new projects for enabling business growth and innovation. The cloud introduces collaboration technologies, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which significantly increase operational technology. In addition, the cloud’s broad network access attributes enable financial services companies’ employees to access financial data and applications from the comfort of their preferred locations, ensuring business continuity and enhanced productivity.

4. Advanced Analysis and Intelligence

As new customer demands emerge, they increase the value of real-time financial data. According to a recent report, 53% of users that utilise Office 365 have better access to essential data, which simplifies the decision-making process. The same report found that the employee performance of 43% of organisations participating in the survey improves due to better access to actionable data and organisational portals anytime and from any location. Additionally, the cloud’s artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies enable financial institutions to analyse data conveniently and derive key insights for enhancing productivity and employee performance. For example, instead of responding to email messages one at a time, a financial services firm can leverage the cloud’s analytics to sort the emails according to priority, thus reducing unproductivity.

5. Innovative Employee/Customer Experience

Financial services companies require tools for tracking, managing, and engaging with clients, and adopting cloud solutions can provide access to such tools. For example, the cloud’s customer relationship management tools permit financial organisations to develop essential analytics, create comprehensive programs that ensure customers are more enthusiastic and connected to the firm’s services, and better manage customer transaction information. Enhancing the customer/employee experience ensures that a financial services company communicates with clients in real-time, identifies new business needs to keep up with the competition and provides financial services tailored to customers’ specific needs and requirements. Cloud adoption provides the necessary tools for enhancing customer/employee experience to optimise service delivery and increase productivity.

Cloud Geeni, a trusted MSP to the Financial Services Sector

Cloud Geeni have been helping Financial firms in the UK achieve operational excellence through cloud adoption for over two decades.

If your business is ready to take the next steps towards cloud adoption, get in touch with our expert Cloud Consultants today to find out more.