TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands, Jan. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cloud computing has rapidly developed globally. The worldwide infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market grew by 37.3% in 2019 to total $44.5 billion, up from $32.4 billion in 2018, according to the international consulting company Gartner.
China, home to many emerging tech giants, has witnessed a rise in leveraging cloud computing.
The country has maintained its position as the world's second-largest cloud services market amid record spending of $4.3 billion in the second quarter this year, marking a 70% increase from a year ago.
Betting on cloud's decentralisation, the financial industry has vastly adopted it as the traditional business has for a long time been struggling to swiftly respond to inquiries and orders from clients, who are savvy internet users themselves and have cultivated a high demand for efficiency.
Research body CAICT said that 95% of enterprises believe that cloud computing can largely reduce their IT costs while over 10% said that the cost can be wiped by half.
Two out of five also said that cloud computing has streamlined the IT operation as the maintenance work has been largely reduced and the security has improved.
Bank of Asia, as one of the world's first fully digitalised global banks, is an early adopter of cloud computing to better allocate resources.
The bank started migrating its platform to the cloud in 2019 to reduce transaction time and cost, resulting in savings that it passes on to its customers. Most of its functions, including account opening, AML/KYC, and transaction processing have been moved onto the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud.
"Cloud Computing helps relieve some of the IT operational burdens thanks to its shared responsibility model. After we migrated the core banking system to the AWS Cloud, IT costs for our core banking system have decreased by 50% and have remained low despite the increase in staffing required to shift from an outsourcing to an in-house approach," said Kevin Leung, Head of IT at BOA Financial Group, the back-office of Bank of Asia managing its IT infrastructures.
Furthermore, with its core banking system running on the cloud, a financial institution gains a level of flexibility through APIs that allows it to connect its new system with existing ones. By introducing API-enabled architecture to its core banking functions, Bank of Asia has become better positioned to extend its offerings through the open banking system, launching initiatives with some international payment platforms with diversified transfer options for its customers.
The bank expects more collaboration with Fintech industry and plans to share the bank's open APIs to introduce more personalised services to its customers and ultimately create additional revenue streams.
On the other side, brisk development of Fintech has raised concerns over privacy and security issues as tremendous information of clients, products and business are involved.
EU has pioneered in the data protection in the cyberspace. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforced in 2018, requires business processes that handle personal data to be designed and built with consideration of the principles and provide safeguards to protect data. A slew of measures have also rolled out in China, such as Regulations on Classified Protection of Cybersecurity (Draft for Comment) and Information security technology – Personal Information Security Specification, underscoring authorities' efforts on security of internet information.
More than 60% of financial professionals said security is the most important consideration in shifting to cloud computing when ranking the top priority, according to CAICT.
Bank of Asia takes security extremely seriously and sets a good example for the industry by migrating to the cloud step by step. The bank first moved its supporting functions that require a relatively low-level of security, such as the distribution system and marketing system, to the cloud, which worked as a testing process to ensure the stability and security of its cloud, paving a way to eventually migrating the core system.
Looking ahead, adopting cloud computing is inevitable for enterprises, financial institutions in particular. The migration procedure might be challenging to some extent. Yet with better structured systems on the cloud, companies will see not only much more room for sustainable growth of the existing business, but opportunities for developing new businesses and connecting to a broader range of clients.
About Bank of Asia
Bank of Asia provides banking and asset management services to companies, high net worth individuals, family offices and trusts across the globe, especially those with interests in offshore jurisdictions, through its digital platform.
The Bank's vision is to change the way people bank through delivering cost effective, efficient and user-friendly FinTech solutions, underpinned by innovative technologies and robust quantitative analytics in the Know Your Customer and Anti Money Laundering process.
In addition to general banking services such as deposits and loans in multiple currencies, cross-border payments and remittance, it also provides investment banking, corporate advisory and structured financing, private banking, insurance, investment and asset management services through its business partners.
Bank of Asia is licensed and regulated by the Financial Services Commission of the British Virgin Islands (BVI FSC).
For more details, please visit www.bankasia.com.
