How the cloud can enable enhanced risk management and innovation

In an environment that is constantly changing due to COVID-19, increased competition, ever-evolving customer sentiments, and emerging technologies, financial services organizations are feeling the pressure to innovate.

At the same time, the expectations for an effective risk management program have also increased in response to cyber threats, regulatory pressures, market fluctuations, and increasingly sophisticated financial criminals. Advancements in cloud computing are enabling organizations to improve their risk-management capabilities to get ahead of issues while continuing to deliver on and evolve their business strategy.

At this year’s Sibos, during the conference’s first all-woman Spotlight session, I shared some observations around how the cloud empowers organizations to innovate and effectively manage risk—two enterprises that are often perceived as contradictory but can actually be complimentary. Check out some key points I shared in my Spotlight session:

Data is the bridge, but how do I build it?

Risk management and innovation do not have to be opposing forces. They can evolve over time if you facilitate a culture of innovation and properly manage and leverage your data. But managing petabytes—and even terabytes—of data while trying to glean insights is costly and timely. It’s no longer just about having data but how quickly you can process it and derive actionable insights.

For decades, the high cost and complexities of provisioning data storage and compute has forced a difficult trade-off: either purge data and slow time to insights or take on the cost of resourcing to peak requirements. The cloud has changed that.

The move to the cloud and the possibilities

There are numerous reasons why organizations are moving to the cloud, enhancing their ability to make better decisions faster and resulting in greater innovation and better risk management, without having to sacrifice either.

Cost. With the cloud, you don’t have to pay upfront costs for servers and data centers. Instead, you pay for what you consume as a variable expense.

Agility and speed. Instead of waiting 10 to 12 weeks to provision infrastructure, the cloud allows organizations to get access to thousands of servers in minutes.

Access to data analytics and machine learning services. In addition to on-demand storage and compute, the cloud also enables access to the latest data analytics and machine learning capabilities, such as data lakes, with which you can store and run analytics across nearly limitless amounts of structured and unstructured data.

With these capabilities, startups can stand up broker-dealer services that securely manage and authenticate customer information. Risk management teams can speed up and increase efficiencies across anti-money laundering capabilities, fraud-detection efforts, risk modeling, and compliance programs. And service teams can analyze customer behavior to improve service, automate manual processes, and better protect customer data.

For more detailed examples of how financial services organizations use cloud-enabled technologies to cultivate innovation while managing increasingly complex risks, watch my Spotlight session:

For more information about how AWS can accelerate time to insights, visit AWS Data Lakes and Analytics and AWS Machine Learning.

Learn more about how AWS helps financial institutions use the cloud to drive innovation and business growth by tuning into:

• The acceleration in cloud migration featuring Frank Fallon, Vice President of Global Financial Services, Amazon Web Services
• The cyber resource problem – is it totally unsolvable? featuring Jonathan Allen, Director of Enterprise Strategy, Amazon Web Services