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Capital Markets Need to Embrace Change and the Cloud

Capital Markets CIO Outlook | Monday, August 23, 2021

This is nowhere more apparent than in the relatively small uptake of cloud by the industry. Almost all firms are talking about their 'cloud-first approach,' but in most situations, the average company is likely to have moved just a fraction of its workload to the cloud.

Fremont, CA:Capital markets used to enjoy a reputation for being at the cutting edge of technology. Today, almost every industry uses AI, predictive analytics, and giant data servers in some way, but hedge funds and asset managers were already ahead of their risk modeling, pricing, and quantitative trading curves in the early 2000s in exploiting software and algorithms. Unfortunately, in recent years, technology and innovation have taken a back seat as the industry grapples with high costs and tariff compression.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the relatively small uptake of cloud by the industry. Almost all firms are talking about their 'cloud-first approach,' but in most situations, the average company is likely to have moved just a fraction of its workload to the cloud.

This is despite a great deal of evidence that technology can give businesses lower prices, greater size and extra accessibility. But the Covid-19 pandemic is pushing them to speed up their cloud journey and provides the ideal opportunity to make a clean break from their cluttered, cumbersome technology setups.Generally speaking, companies that have made bold inroads into the cloud have been better able to weather volatility and turbulence and switch to a new operating model.

This should concern modest migrants who simply do not have the same working latitude and tempo. Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) setup, their cloud forays were limited to individual use cases, such as regulatory reporting workloads, which are currently under Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) setup.Some of their trading, risk management and post-trade processing applications have been moved to the public cloud, but figures tell the tale.