Cloud migration is a chance to reconfigure a bank’s operations and customer relationships. By unbundling monolithic architectures, institutions give themselves the flexibility to respond to changing markets quickly and bring customers an open ecosystem to serve their evolving needs.
94% of banking executives predict that 50% or more of their organization's business will be carried out in the cloud by 2025.
- Accenture
The cloud is a powerful enabler of change and innovation. It allows financial institutions to build personalized and humanized connections with their customers, representing a major growth opportunity.
It also gives banks the ability to access computing services such as servers, storage, or software over the Internet rather than from within their own on-premises data centers.
This new model of IT ownership accelerates transformation, reduces the financial burden of innovation, and gives banks the ability to become more agile to unlock economies of scale.
Overall, the cloud grants a significant competitive differentiation which could give financial institutions a market advantage over relatively slow-moving incumbents.
From democratizing access to cutting-edge technologies to boosting data security, cloud is a critical technology that can improve customer satisfaction and drive sustainable growth.
Cloud providers offer flexible access to AI capabilities, including generative AI models. Accenture argues that generative AI could increase the time allocated to client interactions and advice by 17%, reporting that these activities account for roughly 80% of banking revenue.
Financial institutions can use AI to offer personalized services that respond to each customer’s unique financial context. It can also be deployed to offer automated customer service that supplements human interactions, freeing employees from manual labor.
This enables banking staff to work on strategic tasks requiring complex decision-making or creativity. This shift not only enhances operational efficiency but also allows for a more personalized and engaging customer experience.
Cloud intelligence also provides actionable insights on how a cloud-agnostic platform can enhance flexibility, reduce risk, optimize cost, and drive innovation.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of the cloud is that it gives institutions the ability to roll out new products or services at scale, reducing the burden of R&D costs and dramatically improving time to market.
Bank of America, the second largest US bank, has decided to go against the Wall Street trend by building its own private cloud infrastructure rather than outsourcing to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or another cloud provider.
It first launched into the cloud with a $350 million investment which has led to a remarkable payoff. This bold decision helped Bank of America reduce the number of servers from 200 000 to 70 000 from 200 000 and cut the number of data centers from 60 to 23. The private cloud program enabled BoA to make $2 billion in annual infrastructure savings.
Another notable use case is Revolut, a leading neobank that leveraged the cloud to build an infrastructure that supports rapid scaling and automated deployments, while ensuring stability and security. This technological foundation has enabled Revolut to automate deployment processes, significantly improving efficiency by unlocking the capability to perform multiple daily deployments.
Cloud scalability allows Revolut to adjust resources instantly, ensuring its infrastructure remains compliant through a shared responsibility model. This shift has empowered Revolut to maintain a secure, stable, and scalable environment, supporting its rapid growth and the continuous delivery of innovations.
Cloud offers almost limitless business benefits, including a reduction in implementation downtime that can dramatically accelerate development. However, choosing a cloud provider can be a tricky task due to the vast number of available options, pricing models, and compliance with specific regulatory standards.
To help financial institutions unlock the benefits of the cloud, ebankIT has always aimed to remain agnostic in its core banking connections, as well as deployment models.
A cloud-agnostic approach allows financial institutions to enhance flexibility, reduce risks by avoiding vendor lock-in, optimize costs through provider competition, and drive innovation by integrating best-of-breed services from multiple clouds.
The ebankIT platform is compatible with both on-prem and cloud deployment scenarios and continuously optimizes cloud processes to suit a wide range of scenarios and use cases without being tied to a specific provider.
The cloud will be a key enabler of banks’ growth plans in 2026 and for many years to come. We are at a crucial stage in the development of this game-changing technology, meaning decisions taken today will directly impact competitiveness tomorrow.
Are you ready to compete in the cloud?