Finance Monthly January 2020 Edition

Furthermore, with Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2) fast-approaching, companies are obliged to implement Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) to mitigate the risk of payment fraud. A huge number of fraud cases – nearly 340,000cases - were reported in 2018 , calling for a double layer of authorisation to make financial transactions over £28 more secure. It has therefore never been more important for institutions to properly execute a full-scale migration to the cloud to benefit from its innovative services, including biometrics. Benefits of migration The AWS marketplace, and similar service providers, offer an online platform through which customers can unlock a plethora of cloud and other digital applications. Making the transition via these networks, where the cloud is effectively brought to you, renders the process far more simple and frictionless. Through AWS, financial firms can easily integrate the necessary biometric authentication platforms. Designed to verify the identification of employees and customers using multi-factor authentication, companies become far less susceptible to cyberattacks and data breaches. By adopting digital identification technologies, institutions can achieve regulatory compliance and offer a safer customer experience. It is not too late for traditional firms to transform themselves and compete. The greater computing power of cloud- based software brings a host of other benefits to organisations and customers. Having data centralised through the cloud avoids the latency issues that come from having computing tasks handled from afar, and permits the on-demand availability of resources. This allows a more seamless digital experience to be created, to meet the evolving needs of customers. Simultaneously, businesses can gain cost and time efficiencies that translate into more effective workload management, increased flexibility and ultimately productivity. If financial companies are to avoid falling behind today’s challenger banks, they must discontinue the use of legacy IT infrastructure, and fast. By utilising the resources that services such as the AWS marketplace have to offer, companies can efficiently embed the cloud into their operations, and deliver the best online experience expected of today’s educated customers. The migration will only ensure secure account entry using the latest biometrics, it will also achieve cost and time efficiencies that could well turn around profit margins. 1 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/01/mobile-banking-to-overtake-high-street-branch-visits-in- two-years 2 https://www.instapay.today/insight/legacy-technology-in-banking-a-real-issue-or-is-it-just-perception/ 3 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/27/major-banks-suffer-five-glitches-week-finds/ 4 https://www.paymentscardsandmobile.com/uk-fraud-report-2019/ 39 www.finance-monthly.com FINANCIAL INNOVATION & FINTECH - CLOUD COMPUTING