Earlier this month the FCA published its guidance for financial services firms using, or considering using, the cloud and other third-party IT services – ushering in a new level of support for cloud in financial services that will help spur adoption.

The FCA’s approval on the use of the cloud in financial services adds weight to a growing realisation of the advantages it delivers. These include faster access to innovation, transformation at scale and speed to market.

Across all types of institutions, from challenger banks to tier one players, cloud is a fundamental part of the future and a key enabler of digitalisation. The more regulators support it, the more resistance will be reduced. The FCA’s announcement is in line with other regulatory bodies that have already given the go ahead, including the Dutch banking watchdog, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), which approved  the use of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in retail banking platforms several years ago. As cloud computing continues to gather momentum we can expect other industry bodies to follow suit.   

With adoption concerns around security and data management increasingly being addressed by suppliers and service providers whose offerings are continually evolving, the barriers to making the move to the cloud are falling. Today there’s a multitude of different cloud options available, with a flavour to suit everyone – ranging from private to public and hybrid cloud, as well as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings.

While issues will be ever present within the cloud debate, as long as every effort is made to ensure the solutions are as secure as possible, the benefits stack up – lower total running costs, greater agility and flexibility and delivering a materially improved service to customers, regulators and investors. All are compelling drivers for firms to make the leap.