Data analytics for financial services

Financial services organizations today face major challenges. Their customers expect high-quality digital experiences — such as video tellers, AI-driven business advisors and fast onboarding that delivers instant decisions and credit disbursement. They need to cut costs in order to grow and innovate, so they can’t afford to invest in technologies that won’t deliver cost savings. Plus, they’re under constant attack from cyber criminals, at a rate 300 times higher than other businesses.

To address these challenges, many firms are looking to the cloud. In the cloud, they’re able to transform the way they do business, boost their cost efficiency and protect their sensitive business data. As a result, according to a recent financial services study by FinTech Connect, in partnership with Rackspace Technology™ and Google Cloud™:

84% of financial services organizations report that their cloud platform is moderately-to-extremely important in driving business performance.

But how does this work exactly? How has the cloud become so key to a financial services firm’s success? And how is the cloud different from previous technologies? According to surveyed firms, one main reason is the cloud’s ability to turn data into actionable insights.

Data insights deliver a competitive edge

Data is the lifeblood of financial services — with 78% of firms reporting that gaining insight and value from data is moderately-to-extremely important for their organization. They’re taking steps toward becoming truly data-driven organizations, where decision making is guided by reliable and actionable data.

But where does that leave the other 22%? For them, a data-driven, 360-degree customer view is still far off. Many believe that they’re getting enough customer insight from their legacy systems, but as others raise the bar in terms of personalized products and experiences, “enough customer insight” becomes a moving target.

Truly data-driven organizations are applying cloud technologies like AI and machine learning to:

• Better understand their customers
• Achieve predictive insights
• Safely share data across business units
• Automate processes and streamline data capture, at scale

According to Simon Bennett, Rackspace Technology EMEA CTO, the first step is to gain control of your existing data. Get to know what’s there and understand how it’s managed and updated. And as you combine that data with external information, you can get a fuller picture of your customers — so you can make decisions that improve customer outcomes and your bottom line.

Simon also added that this shift doesn’t always mean leaving behind your legacy systems. It just means evolving your relationship with them. For example, you can run containers on a mainframe, a Unix system in your data center, or in the cloud. It’s more a matter of embracing new development methods and seeing the cloud as a platform for business transformation — not just a place to run workloads.

Google Cloud Platform for financial services

Half of the world’s top financial institutions rely on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to achieve data insights and business transformation in the cloud — including Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab, Bloomberg, Citi and PayPal. With GCP, you have the tools you need to adapt to evolving customer expectations and fast-moving markets. Plus, GCP is built to address your security and compliance needs.

GCP also provides the ability to test and trial new services without significant investment or risk. This allows your firm to be more experimental in your ideas and concepts, with less fear of failure.

Rackspace Technology is here to help you make the most of GCP as well as AI and machine learning, Internet of Things and other emerging technologies — so you can adopt new, innovative ways of delighting your customers. Learn more about how we can serve your financial services organization.