The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) has published a paper setting out 14 recommendations to help realise the full potential of public cloud computing across the capital markets industry. The recommendations for banks, cloud providers, regulators, and the industry as a whole aim to increase the transparency and collaboration required to build further confidence, trust and capability in public cloud.
While the use of public cloud technology is expected to expand significantly across all areas of the capital markets value chain, with AFME members identifying the key benefits being greater business agility and innovation, improved cost management and efficiency, and enhanced client experience and service offerings, barriers remain. These are identified as legacy IT complexity, security implications, regulatory concerns, a lack of standardisation in cloud provider services, and long-term considerations on concentration risk.
Key use cases of public cloud identified in the paper include improving resiliency through back up and archiving of data, capacity bursting to support resource intensive processes, running sophisticated data analytics, and supporting innovation projects.
Given the benefits of, and barriers to, public cloud adoption, the paper reports that banks are still at an early stage of public cloud adoption. Over two-thirds of AFME members involved in discussions estimated that only 1-10% of their bank’s current workload is using some level of public cloud.
James Kemp, managing director, head of technology and operations at AFME, says: “The use of public cloud in financial services offers significant opportunities and benefits for all parties. However, to realise these and increase adoption it is vital that the whole industry continues to collaborate. This includes ensuring that knowledge, skills, security and risks are appropriately assessed and identified throughout this long-term transformation.”
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