The financial services industry is evolving at a rapid pace, with shifting consumer expectations, new technologies, and developing regulatory requirements. Financial services firms need the right technology to help them stay agile and prepare for the future. 

The cloud is a key point of leverage for firms looking to improve performance across a broad range of activities. Moving to the public cloud can advance operational resiliency, improve staff productivity, increase regulatory compliance and enhance business model innovation. 

However, there are a number of financial services companies that are still hesitant in their cloud journeys. The barriers to adoption vary, from the complexity of legacy systems, to trust and skills gaps, regulatory uncertainty, and fragmentation of compliance requirements. Although many companies have embraced the benefits of cloud technology, more robust cloud adoption—especially around core back-office functions—will require additional facilitation, including through regulatory harmonization and streamlining.

A new comprehensive study on cloud adoption in financial services

To better understand the challenges and opportunities of cloud adoption in financial services Google Cloud, together with the Harris Poll, surveyed more than 1,300 leaders from the financial services industry across the United States, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Australia. 

There were five noteworthy takeaways from the study:  

1. A vast majority of financial services companies are already using some form of public cloud. A large number of surveyed financial services companies (83%) report they are deploying cloud technology as part of their primary computing infrastructures. Of those using cloud technology, the most popular architecture of choice is hybrid cloud (38%), followed by single cloud (28%), and multicloud (17%). Notably, of respondents without a multicloud deployment, 88% reported they are considering adopting a multicloud strategy in the next 12 months.

2. Financial services institutions in North America are leading in cloud adoption. Of the financial services companies who are implementing a cloud strategy, the highest levels of cloud workload adoption were reported in North America, with institutions in the U.S. (54%) and Canada (52%) leading the way. The lowest level of cloud adoption was reported in Japan (42%).

3. As financial services companies continue to use the cloud, more core functionalities can and will be migrated. While many financial services companies have migrated substantial workloads to the cloud, the industry is far from full adoption when it comes to core, back-office workloads. Of financial services companies currently using a majority cloud strategy in the United States, for example, only half (54%) of their workloads are fully deployed in the cloud. Data and IT security (74%), regulatory reporting (57%), and fraud detection and prevention (57%) rank among the highest workload adoption. Core underwriting activity (40%) and data reconciliation (48%) ranked lowest. Across Europe, cloud usage for core activities like underwriting also scored low with the UK listing only 30% adoption.

4. Among respondents, there is a very strong positive perception of the potential for cloud technology to assist in business operations and regulatory compliance. Nearly all respondents (>88%) agreed that cloud adoption can:

1. help adapt to changing customer behaviors and expectations,  
2. enhance operational resilience, 
3. support the creation of innovative new products and services, 
4. enhance financial services institutions’ data security capabilities, and 
5. better connect siloed legacy software infrastructure within financial services institutions. 

5. Certain regulator-induced challenges, including the complexity of sectorial compliance frameworks and fragmentation, create hurdles to cloud adoption for financial services companies. While 88% of respondents had a positive view of current regulatory efforts to provide guidance and clarity for cloud implementation, the results showed that more needs to be done to facilitate adoption. Most respondents (84%) agree that regulatory reviews and approvals take too long because of regulatory fragmentation across regulatory bodies. And 78% say that regulatory uncertainty over the use of public cloud prevents their organizations from adopting cloud technologies that would otherwise provide benefit to them. Additionally, a third of all on-premises respondents (38%) say that the large investment of resources for the regulatory approval process is a reason why they’re not using cloud services.

“While many banks have already deployed hybrid cloud environments, others are still in various stages of planning and deploying,” said Jerry Silva, research vice president for IDC Financial Insights. “Clearly, hybrid infrastructure is a reality, and financial institutions must focus not only on leveraging the modern infrastructure model to gain efficiencies, resilience and agility, but also on taking the necessary steps to manage such environments, including the security and compliance of cloud services.”

Future recommendations for financial services regulators

Financial services firms should continue to maximize the potential of technology by migrating more core workloads to the cloud, and actively considering multicloud and hybrid-cloud strategies. Such strategies enhance resiliency of existing IT infrastructure and reduce concerns over vendor lock-in. 

The research also points to steps that regulators could take to provide additional clarity and guidance, such as aligning regulatory reviews across agencies to avoid fragmentation; developing regulatory “safe harbors” for cloud adopters based on adherence to accepted standards and best practices; training regulatory staff on emerging tech; and advancing data reporting requirements via cloud and related technologies.

In the past few years, many regulators across the globe have taken a robust approach to rationalizing rules and guidance to cloud adoption in the financial sector, which has helped significantly stimulate adoption. But further assurances and harmonization of best practices around supervision is needed to advance risk-based and secure digital innovation.  

At Google Cloud, we’re committed to working with financial services customers and regulators to provide them with controls and assurances on risk management, data locality, transparency, and compliance. We are constantly engaging with regulators to share information, respond to their considerations and concerns, and address questions in the interest of transparency and building trust. 

To learn more about these findings and more, download our infographic and our full report. 

^{Research methodology}

^{The survey was conducted online by the Harris Poll on behalf of Google Cloud, from December 7, 2020, to January 4, 2021, among 1,363 senior executives in France (n=113), Germany (n=178), the UK (n=192), Hong Kong (n=99), Indonesia (n=100), Japan (n=142), Singapore (n=71), Australia (n=134), Canada (134), and the United States (n=200) who are employed full-time, part-time, or self-employed whose main functional role is in risk/compliance or IT at a company in the banking, finance, or financial services industry with a title of director level or higher. The data in each country were weighted by the number of employees to bring them into line with actual company size proportions in the population. A global post-weight was applied to ensure equal weight of each country in the global total.}

Startups worldwide turn to Google Cloud tools to build fast on a strong and easy to use platform that helps them get to market and launch products faster, all while building on the cleanest cloud in the industry. Startups leverage Google Cloud and our Google for Startups Cloud Program to go from idea to IPO, and there are a variety of products on Google Cloud that can help them.

Here are the 8 top products that startups use on Google Cloud to innovate and grow:

Firebase for app development

Speed up innovation with Firebase, a mobile development platform that’s fully integrated with Google Cloud. Work in a simpler cloud environment, easily pull in products or services, and build your apps faster.

Cloud SQL for database needs

Build your startup’s foundation with Cloud SQL, a fully managed relational database solution that integrates with Google Cloud services. Create and connect to your first database in minutes and scale with a single API call.

AI and machine learning products

Solve tough problems with AI and machine learning products, built with the best of Google’s technology. Train deep learning and machine learning models cost-effectively so you can iterate and innovate faster.

BigQuery for data analytics

Drive agility with BigQuery, a serverless, cost-effective, multi-cloud data warehouse. Query streaming data in real time, predict business outcomes with built-in machine learning, and share analytics with just a few clicks.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for containers

Unlock faster, more secure app development with GKE, the most scalable Kubernetes platform. Streamline operations with release channels that fit your business needs and leave cluster monitoring to Google engineers.

Looker for data visualization

Get more from your data to keep moving ahead of the competition with Looker, a trusted business intelligence and data platform. Generate real-time reports and get insights at the right time with proactive alerts.

Cloud Run for serverless computing

Create scalable containerized apps in any programming language on Cloud Run, a fully managed compute platform. Pair it with container tools like Cloud Build and Docker, and only pay when your code is running.

Cloud Armor for security

Protect your startup from Web attacks with Cloud Armor, a leading Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) defense service. Use it with an HTTP Load Balancer for Managed Instance Groups across regions to keep your workloads highly available and secure.

To learn more about products best-suited to the unique demands of startups, check out our startups solution page. Our team is looking forward to discussing how these products can help you. If you’re not already in the program, you can get started here.

If you want to learn more about how Google Cloud can help your startup, visit our page here to get more information about our program, and sign up for our communications to get a look at our community activities, digital events, special offers, and more.

If you took one look at the title of this blog and thought, “just show me how, because I already know a million reasons why I’m stressed about billing things” then check out the interactive tutorial right here.

For everyone else, read on, because we’ll walk through some common sense tips, and a few step-by-step tutorials for all things billing related. If you’ve ever wished you could sit down with someone from Google Cloud, and walk through your bill, the console, and your options — you’re in the right place! Consider this Cloud Billing 101 – an intro level course that’ll get you started on the right foot.

6 simple tips to manage your Google Cloud billing accounts:

1. Get to know your billing statement and console: Knowledge is power, after all. Take a tour of the billing console so you can better understand your options, along with what’s included in your monthly bill and the different components.
2. Set up authorized users, alerts and budgets: Make sure anyone who needs to have access to payment settings is authorized. Allocate budgets for projects, and get notifications when your usage or spending exceeds a certain amount so you can take action as needed.
3. Use cost-saving tools: We’ve got  a range of tools and services to help you save money, like Committed Use Discounts, and even Recommenders for actionable, AI-powered intelligent recommendations around your cost trends and product usage.
4. Optimize your resources: Use the Google Cloud Resource Manager to see how your resources are being used and identify areas for optimization, temporarily suspend, or even shut down unused projects. 
5. Review your billing history with reporting and data visualization: Regularly check your billing history with reports to help track your spending, identify any trends or patterns, and even anticipate future costs. You can even export your data to BigQuery for detailed analysis, or use a tool like Google Data Studio to visualize your data.
6. Use the pricing calculator: Estimate your monthly costs and make informed decisions with the Google Cloud pricing calculator. It can help you get a ballpark figure for your usage, and determine if your use case fits within cost-free parameters.

I hope these common sense pointers and tutorials empower you to effectively manage your Google Cloud billing and stay on top of your spending. Get started right now by managing your billing methods and payment settings in this 5-minute tutorial, and then take a tour of the billing console to get familiar with your setup.

About Tencent Africa

Tencent Africa is dedicated to making every day easier for customers and brands. Opening its doors in 2013 as WeChat Africa, the company is responsible for WeChat operations on the continent.

Industries: Technology

Location: South Africa

About Siatik Systems

Founded in 2008, South Africa-based Siatik Systems is a leading Google Cloud Platform solutions provider with a focus on cloud integration services, information technology consulting services, and bespoke software engineering solutions.

Industries:

Location:

As one of Africa’s leading technology companies, Tencent Africa is responsible for WeChat operations on the continent. WeChat Africa has successfully launched a number of features including the WeChat Wallet, a mobile payment service for smartphones, which enables seamless and secure transactions for friends to send money to one another, cash money out at Standard Bank ATMs, use at accredited retailers, and make purchases from any SnapScan merchant in South Africa. Under the new name, Tencent Africa recently launched two new mobile products, JOOX, a mobile music streaming application, and VOOV, a social live streaming application.

When China’s Tencent brought its hugely popular instant messaging service WeChat to South Africa, it faced a near saturated market. To gain traction, Tencent Africa had to showcase WeChat’s versatility as a platform that goes far beyond just instant messaging. Engaging with local financial partners helped WeChat launch a WeChat Wallet to facilitate electronic payments, while providing exclusive content from South African cultural figures helped bring the platform extra publicity.

As WeChat started to grow its customer base, its on-premises infrastructure was stretched beyond its limits and the company looked for a cloud-based solution. After evaluating all its options, Tencent Africa found Google Cloud Platform best suited its needs.

“We’re a growing business and constantly upgrading our infrastructure. Getting new servers was becoming quite expensive so we wanted a cloud-based solution to reduce costs,” says Christoff Albertyn, Head of Technology at Tencent Africa. “When we did some latency testing, Google came out on top, so it made sense to go with them. Everybody loves Google, it’s a great brand. Just knowing a company like Google is behind it gives you peace of mind.”

Building a platform to scale

Instant messaging services need a stable infrastructure, the ability to scale at speed, and lightning fast performance. When Tencent Africa built an Official Accounts API to run a number of services on WeChat, to help companies engage with users on the platform, latency was its main concern. The Official Accounts services had to deliver replies over WeChat in under five seconds or the connection would drop.

Between the API on-premises servers in South Africa and WeChat’s main servers in China, Tencent Africa’s services regularly hit the limits of the permissible response time. In addition, by 2015, WeChat was starting to garner more customers across South Africa and Tencent Africa had to provision more servers. The on-premises servers were simply being asked to do too much, and expansion was proving expensive, so the company looked for a cloud-based solution.

Before committing to anything, Tencent Services did a thorough latency test of several cloud-based solutions. Google Cloud Platform came top. Tencent also engaged the help of Siatik, a Google Partner, to gauge what solutions best fit the company’s needs and help implement them. Siatik customers span both the public and private sectors and its consultants are regularly engaged in the health care, education, financial and technology industries. In order to provide leading technology solutions, it partners with industry leaders, such as Google, to provide best-of-breed infrastructure and cloud platform solutions to its customers.

“Siatik was a great partner to work with,” says Christoff. “Any questions I had, I could just pick up the phone and whatever it was they’d help me out. They were also able to get some of the team from Google to come to our offices and see how we worked, which was really good.”

With a simple, clean interface in Google Compute Engine, the company was able to spin up virtual instances very quickly and begin migrating its stack to Google. When it became more comfortable with Google Cloud Platform features, Tencent used Google Cloud SQL and Google BigQuery to manage its data streams, and Google Cloud Storage to store them safely.

From day one, it was very smooth. The interface was amazing—Google must have spent a long time perfecting it because it was so easy to use says Christoff. “I set up the first virtual machine in no time without any struggles.”

In addition to powerful hardware from Google Compute Engine, the fast, global network from Google helped to speed up performance. With the infrastructure ported over to Google, Tencent also brought in G Suite as an office productivity solution, which eased the pressure on its servers even more. Throughout the process, Siatik were on hand to advise and provide technical guidance whenever any issues came up.

What I really like is how quickly you can spin servers up. There’s no messing about and the interface is really easy to use, says Christoff. “You can have a virtual machine running in just a few minutes. It’s very impressive.”

Cutting costs, raising expectations

Google Cloud Platform helped Tencent Africa to slash its latency. Before the migration, pings to the Chinese servers and back would regularly take 180 milliseconds. Afterwards, this fell to around 35 milliseconds, helping to ensure smooth service to Tencent’s South African customers. Google offers innovative pricing, such as per-minute billing and sustained use discounts, which helped significantly cut server costs compared to an equivalent on-premises solution.

As its customer base grew, and Tencent Africa began to release new products, the ease of use of Google Compute Engine meant that spinning up new servers took minutes instead of hours and allowed the company to scale up and down at speed. Exploring products such as Kubernetes for rapid deployment or TensorFlow for machine learning, Tencent Africa continues to evolve and experiment with new products to keep WeChat a growing success in South Africa.

“Initially, we just used per-minute billing, but when I saw how much work we were doing with Google BigQuery and Google Cloud SQL, we started to generate sustained-use discounts, which helped save us a lot of money,” says Christoff. “The other great thing is, Google Cloud Platform monitors how you’re using it and tells you what else you can do to reduce costs.”