Cloud Monitor 2022: Use of cloud computing in the financial sector

The financial industry (banks, insurance companies and asset management companies) is increasingly using cloud solutions  - with a higher growth rate than the economy as a whole. Our Cloud Monitor for Financial Services shows that more than eight in ten companies in the financial industry use cloud-based solutions. Last year, just 70 percent of companies said they used cloud solutions. The Cloud Monitor surveyed more than 100 companies from the financial industry, asking them about how and why they use cloud applications. The Cloud Monitor for Financial Services is based on our comprehensive study on cloud use. The general overview of the Cloud Monitor can be found here. 

Our survey of the financial industry clearly shows that the use of cloud solutions is developing very differently in the sector than in the economy as a whole. Although companies use Internet-based tools to roughly the same extent, many companies in the financial industry have made the switch more recently. In recent years, cloud use has increased constantly across all industries, whereas the financial sector has seen stagnation at a level of around 70 percent since 2018. However, the reticence on the part of banks and other financial service providers is now becoming a thing of the past. 

One of the reasons for this reticence was undoubtedly the fact that companies wishing to use cloud applications have to satisfy high standards when it comes to the security of their financial processes. Extensive compliance and legal regulations also have to be observed. This is why it has traditionally taken a relatively long time for companies from the financial industry to make the step into the cloud. Financial service providers have now understood that the cloud can be designed securely. 

In the past year, the desire for greater agility and flexibility has led many companies to the cloud. They want to access platform banking and banking-as-a-service solutions and to cooperate with partners via platforms. They can use the cloud to digitalise and automate their business processes and supplement them with innovative applications such as AI-based data analysis. This also applies to data analysis for ESG reporting: Applications to help companies meet the stringent requirements for these reports are already available.

Our survey shows that financial service providers want to intensify their use of cloud solutions over the coming years. Many companies are planning to roll out additional solutions. The main barriers are compliance and security issues. Moreover, some companies are still finding it difficult to integrate their existing processes with cloud applications. Transferring the available software licences also poses the occasional challenge. 

From our perspective, it is encouraging to see that a lack of acceptance among employees is now a very rare barrier to cloud integration (four percent). Cloud users in the financial industry have understood the relevance of cloud computing to their future competitiveness.

The Cloud Monitor has tracked the development of cloud use and the experiences of cloud users in the German market since 2012. It is conducted by Bitkom Research on behalf of KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft. The sample for this year's survey encompasses 552 German companies with at least 20 employees, including 101 companies from the financial industry. The respondents are managers from the organisational area of information technology and members of executive boards or senior management.

The general overview of the Cloud Monitor can be found here.