The disruptions of the past two and a half years have dispelled the notion that cloud migration is a distant proposition. Instead, the cloud is the 21st century foundation for 21st century banking. Banks that are accelerating their cloud migrations are seizing the opportunity to transform not only their technology architectures, but also how they operate and their relationships with their customers.

In migrating to cloud on an accelerated timetable, every financial services organization has the opportunity to unbundle monolithic architectures and organizations to put itself in a position where it can rapidly sense and respond to an open ecosystem of choice for customers. With a loosely coupled, modern cloud architecture, a bank can focus on capacity for change, innovation, and customer needs.

However, banking is only in the early phases of moving applications to the cloud, with most banks still relying on legacy technology for core business functions, such as customer records, payments, investments, risk and compliance. The result? Higher-than-necessary operating costs, gaps in digital employee and customer experiences, and constraints on innovation and flexibility.

Customers expect financial products personalized to their context and show an increasing willingness to source financial solutions from fintech and neobank challengers. As such, a bank with a coherent and ambitious cloud migration strategy is investing in its future competitiveness in a fast-changing world.

The cloud enables a more personalized, more human connection with customers. It represents a prime growth opportunity for banks that make the transition wisely and put cloud at the core of the business. The cloud is the foundation for a bank which is embedded in every touchpoint, personalized in every interaction and able to address emerging customer needs.

Every leading bank is evaluating how to leverage the cloud to lead in its chosen markets, defend and expand market share and even disrupt parts of the value chain that new competitors are targeting. Those that are moving fast to reposition their business at scale on the cloud are already gaining the computational flexibility and strategic agility they need to leapfrog their peers.

Now is the time for every bank to choose whether it will lead or lag over the decade to come.

In this guide
What does it mean to bank in the cloud?
Why are banks moving to the cloud?
What are the benefits of the cloud for banks?
How are banks thinking about public, private, hybrid and multi-cloud?
Public cloud versus private cloud for banks
What are the key success factors for banks moving to the cloud?
Which skills are banks investing in to drive cloud success?
How are banks developing the skillsets they need to thrive in the cloud?
How are banks using cloud for competitive advantage?
What are the biggest risks for banks when migrating to the cloud?
What are the biggest barriers for banks migrating to the cloud?
How are banks approaching the risks and security challenges of the cloud?
How are leading banks driving better ROI from the cloud?
How are banks accelerating cloud migration?
Can banks modernize applications and migrate to the cloud at the same time?
Are banks really looking to modernize the core?
The key takeaways for banks migrating to the cloud
Preparing for banking in the metaverse and more with cloud

What does it mean to bank in the cloud?
The cloud enables a bank to access computing services such as servers, storage, databases, networking and software over the internet as opposed to running these services themselves in an on-premises data center. The cloud isn’t simply about technology—it’s about a new model of IT ownership that enables banks to innovate faster, become more agile and benefit from unprecedented economies of scale.

A true cloud model should:

Provide a foundation for secure, continuous delivery of content, applications, and services.

Make it easy for a bank to orchestrate new services without needing to manually deploy software or add new hardware to its infrastructure.

Offer flexible, transparent consumption-based pricing—for example, a pay-as-you-go model.

Deliver elastic services, enabling a bank to scale computing resources up or down according to demand.

Decouple data from applications and make it available for any business process or service that may need to consume it.

Guide: https://bankingblog.accenture.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-banking-in-the-cloud