The financial sector is constantly evolving, and digitalisation of our services has been a significant investment line in everyone’s budget for several years now. The acceleration of working from home caused by the Covid-19 pandemic pushed the sector to rethink data access and storage, and cloud solutions have multiplied.
Cloud computing democratises access to technology, giving many companies including those working in the financial sector equal access to computing power and cutting-edge innovation. With cloud, workloads can be provisioned quickly – whenever they are needed.
On 5 July 2022, the ABBL and KPMG Luxembourg held a conference to release and discuss findings of the second edition of the survey on cloud computing adoption in the financial sector of Luxembourg.
A first edition of this survey was successfully conducted in 2019. Since then, the Luxembourg cloud landscape has changed significantly with the COVID-19 pandemic, update of CSSF circulars, and implementation of EBA guidelines on outsourcing arrangements (EBA/GL/2019/02). There has also been a growing demand from ABBL members for information related to the approval of specific cloud computing services, statistics on cloud adoption use cases, criticality and materiality assessment.
In this context, the second edition of the survey, encompassing more than 50 entities, intends to capture market insights on overall cloud computing adoption drivers as well as issues; strategy and governance; detailed information on Infrastructure and/or Platform as a Service use cases; information on Software as a Service use case(s); and IT architecture and information security considerations.
Issues around security, supervisory permissions and a clear legal framework meant that cloud solutions have not been adopted as quickly in the financial sector compared to others. This survey shows that there is a positive shift towards this technology in the Luxembourg financial sector, accompanied by a more innovative approach from the regulator, and a clearer framework for cloud solutions. Findings of the study indicate that 70% and 85% of respondents having adopted (or planning to adopt) cloud services for IaaS and/or PaaS use cases and SaaS use cases.
Conducting surveys amongst our ABBL members on topics that are important to them, and to the future of our industry, is vital to ensure that the Luxembourg Bankers' Association can prioritise our actions and advocate effectively on their behalf. We would like to thank our members for their valuable contribution. Output collected will be analysed within our dedicated working groups such as Cloud Computing and will provide guidance on working priorities and actions. We would like to thank KPMG Luxembourg for partnering with the ABBL on this important study.