Top Cloud-Native Solutions for Banking and Financial Services

Why do financial organizations switch to the cloud? What cloud-native solutions are available for banks, insurance companies, and other firms in the financial sector? Explore the proven cloud finance solutions for your business in this article.

Why Do Banks Switch to Cloud-Native Solutions?

Cloud-native solutions are built for and deployed within the cloud environment, hosted as multi-tenant instances composed of independent modules (microservices architecture). For banking it means fully utilizing cloud technologies for core systems, customer service, digital banking, product maintenance, account maintenance, and other related functions. The entire infrastructure of a cloud-native system is located on the cloud instead of using in-house servers.

Such an approach gives a range of business benefits for financial organizations, including:

• Cost reductions and better cost predictability: Companies minimize their capital expenditure (CapEx) by reducing the needs for on-premises infrastructure, hardware, and personnel. Cloud services offer predictable pricing models that help forecast IT expenses accurately. Pay-as-you-go models help to reduce operational expenditures (OpEx).
• Scalability: Cloud-native architectures are elastic enough for almost real-time resource scaling based on demand, which enables business growth and maintains stable performance without significant upfront investments.
• Increased processing power: The processing power from cloud providers allows for complex computations and data analyses to be performed more quickly and efficiently. Having access to real-time fraud detection, risk assessment, and advanced data analytics proves crucial for maintaining a competitive advantage in the financial market.
• Anywhere/anytime access: Cloud-native solutions provide seamless access to applications and data from anywhere, driving better collaboration among employees, reducing downtime, and enhancing customer experience.
• Stronger compliance and security: Leading cloud providers often comply with major industry standards and regulations, such as GDPR, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, SOC 2, and others. This compliance by design approach helps financial organizations to meet regulatory requirements more efficiently. Also, cloud-native security solutions offer advanced monitoring and logging capabilities that provide real-time visibility into various system activities and help quickly detect and prevent security anomalies. A variety of SIEM solutions and robust disaster recovery tools are available for integration with cloud banking solutions depending on your cloud platform.
• Enhanced user experience: The flexibility and customization range of cloud-native solutions drive personalization and the 24/7 accessibility of customer service. For instance, Allianz Bank Bulgaria started offering personalized service terms for their clients based on the Relationship Pricing module of Oracle FLEXCUBE. It helped the bank enhance customer loyalty and increase its presence in the segment of corporate clients.

Case Study

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Boosting Customer Engagement Through Personalized Bank Service Fees

Leading Cloud-Native Solutions for Finance

Often, by a ‘cloud-native platform’ people understand a set of cloud-native services and components from a single provider used to build a cloud-native infrastructure for a specific organization. According to Statista, the leading providers of such resources include AWS with 31% of market share, Microsoft Azure with 25%, and Google Cloud closing the top three with 11%.

Top Global Cloud Vendors by Market Share

Source

Instead of universal cloud-native platforms, we will focus on cloud-native software solutions specifically designed for the Banking and Finance industry.

1. SAP

As a global leader in ERP solutions for business, SAP has a range of products that fit banking and financial services and cover the specifics of the industry. Besides its core offering, SAP S/4HANA, the company products include:

• SAP S/4HANA for Financial Products Subledger: The solution integrates with the core banking systems to manage financial products’ subledger, enabling detailed accounting and reporting for complex financial services like loans, securities, derivatives, and others.
• SAP Omnichannel Banking: A unified platform for delivering consistent customer experiences through multiple channels, including mobile, online, and branches. It helps banks offer seamless services in a way their customers prefer.

• SAP S/4HANA Treasury and Risk Management: A solution for banks and financial institutions to automate treasury tasks and integrate them with core finance processes. It helps enhance liquidity and manage financial risks.
• SAP Analytics Cloud: A toolkit for advanced analytics and real-time insights into financial performance, customer behavior, market trends, and other mission-critical analytics based on the latest AI technologies.
• SAP Financial Services Network (FSN): A cloud-based platform that connects banks, financial institutions, and corporate clients for secure and efficient global payment and transaction processing. It features streamlined payment workflow across multiple currencies and jurisdictions, ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, and drives faster, more transparent transactions.

SAP offers a broader range of cloud-native solutions for banking and financial services that can cover the diverse needs of financial companies. Infopulse has extensive experience in implementing and adjusting SAP products to enable banks, insurance companies, and other financial businesses to modernize their operations, enhance customer experience, and enforce competitiveness in the market.

2. Oracle FLEXCUBE

Oracle FLEXCUBE was originally designed as an on-premises solution. Now Oracle offers cloud-based deployment options for its suite of banking-focused tools.

At its core, Oracle FLEXCUBE is a modular banking management platform that covers various operations, including retail, corporate, and investment banking services. Key features of the platform include:

• Core Banking: end-to-end support for deposits, loans, payments, and transaction management, account management, financial products management, and automating day-to-day banking operations.
• Omnichannel Banking: delivers seamless customer experience across multiple digital and physical touchpoints, such as mobile banking, internet banking, ATMs, and branches.
• Corporate Banking: supports banking functions like cash management, trade finance, lending, and treasury services. It enables real-time processing and management of high-volume, complex transactions for corporate clients.
• Lending and Trade Finance: a toolset for managing loan origination, servicing, and trade finance to manage retail and commercial loan portfolios. It also enables faster decision-making and better credit risk management.
• Wealth Management: a module for investment portfolio management, personalized financial products, advisory services, and market monitoring.

Read more about Oracle FLEXCUBE and its extensibility capabilities. Infopulse is a certified expert in Oracle Financial Services Core Banking. We help banks switch to FLEXCUBE from legacy systems to gain operational excellence and enhance customer satisfaction.

Case in point: Infopulse helped Allianz Bank Bulgaria adopt Oracle FLEXCUBE and implement two new modules – Deposit Locker and Mortgages – with particular customization to fit the specifics of the bank’s services. As a result, the company significantly improved customer experience through more flexible service offerings. The client also got higher employee satisfaction and operational efficiency through automation.

Case Study

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Core Banking Automation with Oracle FLEXCUBE for Allianz Bank Bulgaria

3. Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the leading cloud-native software solutions for customer management that can be adjusted to meet the needs of banks and financial institutions. The system shows a 360-degree view of customer interactions and helps build efficient and long-lasting relationships with clients. The key features of Salesforce for banking and finances include:

• Financial Services Cloud: this AI-based CRM is tailored specifically for the financial services industry, giving a holistic view of each customer’s financial goals, accounts, and interactions. It is suitable for retail banking, wealth management, insurance, and investment firms.
• Mortgage CRM: Salesforce features a system to streamline loan and mortgage application processes, automate workflows for loan origination, approval, and servicing.
• Compliance and Risk Management: integrated compliance management tools help banks adhere to numerous regulations like KYC (Know Your Customer), AML (Anti-Money Laundering), GDPR, and others.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM): a unified platform for handling customer data, tracking interactions, automating customer journeys, and enhancing customer satisfaction through personalized service based on customer data analytics.
• Customer 360: a platform for integrating customer data from various systems and departments to analyze financial activities and preferences. It helps understand the customer needs better and enhance cross-selling capabilities effectively.
• Omnichannel Engagement: Salesforce provides omnichannel support to interact with customers through mobile, web, email, social media, and in-branch and ensure seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints.
• Salesforсe Einstein: an AI engine for predictive analytics to provide real-time insights into customer behaviors. Besides analytical insights, it enables automation for tasks like lead generation, customer segmentation, and risk assessment, which helps improve operational efficiency.

Salesforce can become a powerful cloud-based CRM system and AI-powered data analytics center for a business in retail or commercial banking, wealth management, and insurance. It helps improve customer experience, streamline operations, and personalize product offerings efficiently.

4. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance

Dynamics 365 Finance is a flagship ERP system for medium-to-large size companies, not specifically designed as a cloud-native solution for the banking and financial services industry. However, it can be a powerful solution to improve financial management, enhance customer service, ensure compliance, and drive digital transformation. For companies in the banking and financial services sector, the solution provides the tools for:

• Lending and loan management: streamlined loan origination and processing with automated loan approvals, documentation and servicing workflows.
• Budgeting and forecasting: tools for forecasting financial performance, cash flow analysis, and building long-term financial plans.
• Asset and treasury management: managing liquidity, investments, and treasury operations efficiently.
• Data analytics and reporting: Power BI integration and built-in analytics for real-time reporting on market trends, financial metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs). The solution also features customizable dashboards for visualizing data for different roles, including executives, relationship managers, and others.
• CRM integration: seamless integration with Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM) to provide financial companies with a complete view of customer interactions, preferences, and financial histories. Based on the information available, relationship managers are able to offer personalized products and better respond to individual customers’ expectations.
• Risk management & fraud detection: Dynamics 365 features AI and ML capabilities for real-time anomaly detection and potential fraud detection. It is also suitable for credit risk analysis, loan processing risk management, and market risk assessment.
• Regulatory compliance: the system has tools for regulatory reporting, audit trails, and ensuring data transparency.

Infopulse is a certified Microsoft partner with in-depth expertise and practical experience in Dynamics 365 integration and setup. If you are considering switching to cloud banking solutions, consult our experts to clarify which system can be adapted to your needs in the best way.

Conclusion

Banks and financial institutions are embracing cloud-native solutions to operate more efficiently, save costs, and win customers in competitive markets. They provide flexibility to scale, automate processes, improve decision-making based on data analysis, and personalize customer experience and product offerings. Market leaders like SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and Microsoft embrace digital transformation in the financial sector by providing relevant cloud finance solutions.

As the Banking and Financial Services industry is one of the core directions of Infopulse technological expertise, our specialists help choose and implement the most suitable cloud-native solution for a specific company’s needs.