Asia cloud computing association – Asia’s financial services on the cloud

Over the last few years, there has been a rapid acceleration of cloud adoption in the financial services sector. In a globally competitive environment, the financial services sector is continually building upon improving customer service in a safe and secure environment. Since this report was published in 2015, there has been updates in outsourcing guidelines among Financial Regulators across the region. There have also been developments in technology whether it be blockchain, fintech or other financial service developments. There is an improved understanding of cloud services from regulators, and more nuanced outsourcing guidelines, which by-and-large has led to an uptake of services from the financial services sector.

But as always, there is more to do.

This report provides an update of jurisdictions which have updated their guidelines since 2015, and provides clear concise recommendations for regulators. It is imperative that regulations should start to work towards a consistent definition of outsourcing between jurisdictions. Definitions of outsourcing vary from country to country. This should be consistent across the region to ensure efficient use of services as well as to reduce compliance requirements.

There also needs to be a clear distinction of services deemed material or critical to FSIs, and those deemed non-critical.

Banks and the financial services sector have been using cloud computing for years in areas such as web content management and customer relationship management software.

Some institutions are looking towards moving core systems to the cloud to offer greater flexibility, and efficiency.

This will be a challenge or opportunity for regulators and cloud service providers for the decade to come.