Banking goes to the cloud

The cloud is important for the Swiss financial centre. It is crucial for enabling banks to take advantage of the opportunities arising from new technologies and to more swiftly offer their customers innovative products. The cloud also offers opportunities when it comes to internal processes. For example, state-of-the-art cloud-based applications can improve an organisation’s processes for internal collaboration. Further to this, with the help of artificial intelligence, money laundering cases can be more efficiently and effectively de-tected and combated.

The event, organised by the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), was directed at over 150 bank employees and other financial centre stakeholders. Participants received a range of information on the opportunities offered by cloud technology. Also discussed were factors that must be taken into account when dealing with the cloud and potential regulatory consequences if customer data is stored and processed in the cloud. The focus here was in particular on bank customer confidentiality and the US CLOUD Act.

“We want to make the path to the cloud easier for our member institutions. As an industry association, we see ourselves as opening the door for them by identifying uncertainties and developing solutions”, says Au-gust Benz, Deputy CEO of the SBA. Speakers from various banks, cloud providers, consulting and law firms, as well as representatives of the authorities gave presentations and participated in the discussions.

The fact that a number of uncertainties exist is also confirmed by the survey of the event participants. “Around three-quarters (76%) of those who attended cited ‘legal uncertainties’ as the greatest obstacle to the broader use of public cloud services”, explains Richard Hess, Head of Digitalisation Projects at the SBA. “Unauthorised access to sensitive corporate data” was also mentioned as an obstacle.

At the beginning of 2019, the SBA published its “Cloud Guidelines”, which address a number of these un-certainties. The guidelines can be downloaded here.