Majority of Bank IT Executives Say Cloud Tech Will Help Achieve Goals

Seven in 10 bank IT executives say they are seeing incorporating cloud technology into products to help them achieve their business priorities, according to a recent survey released by banking software firm Temenos.

The New Economist Intelligence Unit Report: Capturing Value In the Cloud, which surveyed over 200 global banking IT executives, found that 43% of respondents in the US said that incorporating cloud computing into their organisation’s products and services would help them achieve their top business priorities to a greater extent, while 29.4% said to some extent.

The top driver for adopting cloud technology was cost reduction, cited by 40% of respondents in the survey.

Other top drivers of the technology were the adoption of artificial intelligence, business agility and to improve customer experience.

The other four drivers included improving employee efficiency, data security, resilience and performance and elasticity and scalability.

The survey also revealed that 82% of banking IT executives say that they have a clear strategy for adopting cloud technology.

More than half of respondents said that the security and privacy of data stored by third-party providers was their biggest concern. Meanwhile cloud infrastructure is and will be regulated in the future was seen as a top risk by 43.9% of respondents.

Questions around legal liability and compliance of data stored by third-party providers was seen as a top risk by 41%.

According to the report, questions remain over how cloud infrastructure is regulated and governed. The report stated: “Regulators are noting an increase in dependency of financial services firms on cloud providers, concerned that banks may over-rely on particular service prices to run critical systems, threatening financial stability.”

In a wider survey of banking executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit earlier in 2021, including those outside the IT function, 81% of respondents agreed that a multi-cloud strategy will become a regulatory prerequisite.

As firms navigate tricky and technical new territory, 44% agreed that their organisation lacks the regulatory understanding it needs to advance its digital transformation objectives.