Cloud-Monitor 2022: ESG

The financial sector (banks, insurance companies and capital management companies) is increasingly relying on cloud solutions and is experiencing greater growth than the economy as a whole. Our Cloud Monitor for the financial sector shows that more than eight out of ten companies from the financial sector rely on cloud-based solutions. Last year, only 70 per cent reported using cloud solutions. For the Cloud Monitor, we asked more than 100 companies from the financial sector how and why they use cloud applications. The Cloud Monitor Financial Services is a spin-off of our comprehensive study on the topic of cloud. You can find the complete overview of the Cloud Monitor here. 

The survey for the financial sector clearly shows that the use of cloud solutions in the financial world is developing significantly differently than in the economy as a whole. There, internet-based tools are used to about the same extent. But for many companies this has been the case for longer than for companies in the financial sector. In recent years, cloud use has increased consistently across all industries, while in the financial sector it has stagnated around 70 per cent since 2018. Banks and other companies from the financial industry have now abandoned this reluctance with regard to cloud solutions. 

The reluctance certainly had to do with the fact that companies have to meet high requirements for the security of financial processes if they want to use cloud applications. In addition, extensive compliance and legal regulations must be observed. That is why the path to the cloud was and is comparatively long for many companies in the financial sector. In the meantime, financial service providers have understood that the cloud can be designed securely. 

The desire for more agility and flexibility has led many companies to the cloud in the past year. They want access to platform banking, banking-as-a-service solutions and to cooperate with partners via cloud platforms. Business processes are to be digitised and automated in the cloud and expanded to include innovative applications, such as data analyses based on artificial intelligence. This also applies to data analysis for ESG reporting. Here, there are already applications that support companies in meeting the high reporting requirements.

Our survey shows that financial service providers want to deepen their use of cloud solutions in the coming years. Many companies are planning to introduce more solutions. The biggest obstacles are compliance and security issues that need to be implemented. In addition, some companies still find it difficult to integrate existing processes with cloud applications. The transfer of existing software licences also poses challenges in one place or another. 

From our point of view, it is pleasing that a lack of acceptance by employees only rarely hinders cloud integration (four percent). Cloud users in the financial sector have understood the relevance of cloud computing for future competitiveness.

The Cloud Monitor has been investigating the development of cloud use and the experiences of cloud users in the German economy since 2012 and was conducted by Bitkom Research on behalf of KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft. The sample for our survey this year includes 552 companies with at least 20 employees in Germany, 101 of which are from the financial sector. The respondents are managers with tasks from the organisational area of information technology or members of management or the board of directors.

The 2022 edition of the Cloud Monitor for Financial Services can be found here.

You can find the complete overview of the Cloud Monitor here.