One of the world’s most trusted major providers of hardware and software will now be building a cloud banking platform. Led by the former Bank of America’s CTO, Howard Boville, IBM’s ambitious undertaking will see the company step up to demand by creating a cloud platform that will enable swift migration for banks and eliminate the burden of meeting considerable regulations surrounding compliance and transference of data in the process.
The platform will specifically tackle some of the biggest issues faced by banks and fintechs seeking to migrate services to the cloud within a heavily regulated space. It will be focused on integrating correct compliance controls that will appease regulation and risk requirements. In doing so, services utilizing the IBM cloud program will be spared the burden of complying with hundreds of regulations that often cannot keep up with the pace of changing technology. While building a regulation-compliant cloud platform can be too large an undertaking for many startups in the banking and financial services sector, IBM has the resources to see this complex development through.
This development comes at an important time for the company. To be a technology business capitalizing on financial services, one of the largest areas of spend in technology, failing to release a cloud product would have been a significant missed opportunity. It was fortunate then, that Boville left his previous post last spring to continue this project which he started with IBM’s current CEO, Arvind Krishna, while in his role. Thanks to this move, any bank or fintech that utilizes this future cloud program will quickly and easily be able to meet compliance standards. The IBM cloud will also provide important and useful tools enabling correct data encryption, data handling, and storage.
For fintechs, meeting regulatory requirements is a must, especially for startup companies who often report that while their services have appealed to financial institutions, being trusted with client data is often a roadblock to signing the deal. Access to cloud tech from a trusted provider like IBM will go a long way in mitigating any concerns in that area. The creation of this platform will also help IBM to compete with its key competitors who were quick to dominate this trend in enterprise tech such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
While this project will be a serious undertaking, it appears IBM will be able to fill a large gap in the marketplace that will be a significant aid to startups and existing financial institutions. So far, the company’s cloud partners include Bank of America, Luminor, and another 50 software vendors and fintech startups.
