Navigating the digital headwinds in the banking and financial services sector requires a futureproofing strategy – and a robust cloud infrastructure.
Faced with an unprecedented surge in data, shifting customer preferences and evolving regulations, leaders of financial institutions are rapidly adopting and integrating GenAI into their processes to stay competitive.
However, existing legacy systems and traditional on-premise data centres struggle to support and process vast amounts of data in real-time, lacking scalability and cost-effectiveness. This can lead to data silos, which increase security risks.
A robust cloud infrastructure and a futureproofing strategy can help financial institutions address these challenges and deliver real-time services across multiple platforms, enhancing customers’ experience. Furthermore, hybrid multi-cloud strategies provide the resilience needed for critical banking operations, making it a comprehensive solution for the industry’s current challenges.
We find out from Wells Vaughan, CTO of Financial Services APAC, SoftServe, what a futureproof cloud strategy for digital-first banking looks like…
How can banking and financial services be futureproofed in Asia Pacific’s fast-evolving digital landscape?
Vaughan: While modern technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) help unlock digital capabilities to become the banking and financial services of the future, businesses in the sector must think about how to modernize the infrastructure needed to support such emerging technologies, now that we are past their hype.
Cloud-based ecosystems in AI-driven banking are changing how organizations in the sector will operate in the future – confronted with the responsibility of building an infrastructure with the capabilities to manage the technology’s steep processing, data, and security demands of applying reliable large language models (LLMs). Additionally, investing in real data access, engineering, and science-enabling capabilities is a key enabler for unlocking the true potential of these technologies, ensuring high-quality, actionable insights, and driving innovation at scale.
There is a need for the banking and financial services sector to undergo a change to stay resilient against future disruptions, and that change can start with upgrading their cloud capabilities. Already, Nielsen IQ is reporting that four in five businesses in Asia (74%) are aiming for a full cloud migration by 2024.
With our Cloud 2.0 strategy, what SoftServe proposes is a new way of thinking about cloud solutions, one that not only sees the cloud as a functional support to financial institutions’ day-to-day processes but acts as a vital part of the entire financial network that proactively value-adds to an institution’s innovation and business growth.
Considering that the FSI sector is a highly regulated industry, what are the benefits of a hybrid multi-cloud approach for this sector?
Vaughan: A hybrid multi-cloud approach is particularly well-suited for the banking and financial services sector due to its ability to distribute workloads across multiple private and public cloud platforms. This flexibility not only maximizes efficiency but also mitigates security risks by eliminating dependence on a single cloud provider. By balancing workloads across diverse environments, institutions can tailor their IT infrastructure to specific operational needs, ensuring both scalability and agility.
One of the standout advantages of a hybrid multi-cloud strategy is the portability it offers, creating an agile and cost-effective way to address the ever-changing landscape of sovereign, data, and regulatory requirements—whether on a local or global scale. This capability allows financial institutions to dynamically adapt to new regulations, such as data localization mandates, by ensuring workloads and data can be shifted seamlessly to compliant environments.
Moreover, distributing data and applications across multiple environments significantly bolsters disaster recovery capabilities. This minimizes disruptions and ensures business continuity even in the event of a localized attack or outage in one cloud environment.
From a compliance perspective, hybrid multi-cloud solutions excel by enabling institutions to meet stringent regulatory requirements. They support data localization, enforce robust security protocols, and provide a scalable framework for automating compliance processes.
Solutions like Cloud 2.0 further enhance this approach by offering built-in tools to address evolving regulatory landscapes while maintaining operational efficiency. This positions financial institutions to not only comply with regulations but to innovate securely and sustainably in a highly regulated industry.
How should FSIs leverage AI within hybrid multi-cloud environments to drive innovation and improve customer experiences?
Vaughan: The data storage and infrastructure potential a hybrid multi-cloud environment offers makes it ideal to work with when it comes to integrating AI applications. It allows financial institutions to innovate in areas such as:
Fraud detection and prevention – AI can help detect fraudulent activities at a faster rate, by analyzing patterns and identifying anomalies in transaction data.
Personalized services for enhanced customer engagement – AI-driven solutions can process cross-functional amounts of financial data, and subsequently offer tailored financial products and services to customers based on individual customer needs and preferences. Not only that, AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide on-demand support and individualized interactions, thereby improving customer experience satisfaction.
Advanced analytics and predictive modelling – AI’s abilities to analyze amounts of data bigger than classical computational models allows it to provide more accurate insights into real-time customer behavior and market trends, allowing for more informed decision-making in areas such as e.g. stock pricing forecasting.
Intelligent automation – AI can automate previously time-consuming, routine tasks, thereby improving operational efficiency and reducing human error for better accuracy.
A well thought-out, well-developed hybrid multi-cloud environment strategy will ensure that a financial organization stay at the forefront of the digital finance revolution, allowing them to seize new cloud capabilities and quickly capitalize on them.
What Cloud 2.0 offers is a flexible infrastructure that is highly adaptive to rapid innovation and new product development, allowing financial institutions to seamlessly process and analyze data while ensuring business resilience, embedded regulatory compliance and cybersecurity as well as next-level customer experience capabilities.
What is SoftServe doing in terms of partnerships with industry leaders such as NVIDIA and major cloud providers to help FSIs optimize cloud and GenAI solutions? In what ways can Asia Pacific banks and financial service providers leverage these partnerships?
Vaughan: SoftServe has established strategic partnerships with industry leaders like NVIDIA and major cloud providers (including Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.) to optimize cloud and GenAI solutions for banking and financial services organizations. These collaborations enable SoftServe to offer cutting-edge technologies and expertise in AI/ML, cloud migration, and digital transformation.
Key initiatives include:
NVIDIA partnership – SoftServe’s latest GenAI Solutions, boosted by NVIDIA NIM Agent Blueprints, help enterprises overcome production challenges and make GenAI more accessible. They simplify and scale Gen AI workflows across various functions, roles, industries, and technology infrastructures, including cloud and on-premises data centers, to meet today’s business needs.
Google Cloud partnership – SoftServe provides the expertise and tools needed to build and oversee a customer’s infrastructure and applications on Google Cloud, incorporating cloud architecture, infrastructure management with infrastructure as code (IaC).
Microsoft Azure partnership – SoftServe’s Azure Cloud Governance MVP Accelerator is a comprehensive solution designed to address the complex challenges and benefits of cloud governance, in five critical areas (resource consistency, security, cost management, identity, deployment acceleration).
APAC FSI providers can leverage on these partnerships by working with SoftServe to assess, streamline and improve their Cloud 2.0 journey. By leveraging on SoftServe’s technological expertise and well-established industry partnerships, financial institutions can accelerate their digital transformation journey, improve scalability, and stay competitive in the rapidly evolving financial landscape.
