Already today, the cloud is driving the expansion of Raiffeisen Bank International. Tomorrow it will become the growth engine for the country’s entire financial industry in Poland.
Higher customer expectations, new national and EU regulations, macroeconomic changes, cyber threats and competition from fintechs: the financial industry faces a number of challenges. To meet them, it must fully embrace the cloud.
Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) understands this and is innovating boldly to accelerate growth and gain market leadership. It’s doing so with the operational and strategic support of PwC's Cloud Transformation team.
“Banks are traditionally very attached to fixed infrastructure. We have taken the opposite approach: by the end of the year, we will place at least 50% of our applications in the public cloud. The main objective of the migration isn’t cost optimisation, or even increasing the scale of available computing power, but rather the opportunity to create a cutting-edge, efficient and flexible IT environment.”
”Banks are traditionally very attached to fixed infrastructure. We have taken the opposite approach: by the end of the year, we will place at least 50% of our applications in the public cloud. The main objective of the migration isn’t cost optimisation, or even increasing the scale of available computing power, but rather the opportunity to create a cutting-edge, efficient and flexible IT environment.”
How is cloud transformation organised at RBI?
Raiffeisen Bank International is moving eight of its units to the cloud at the same time. They operate in different countries, i.e. in different regulatory environments, which demonstrates the momentum and complexity of the project.
The transformation has been built as a consistent process, from strategy definition to scaled implementation. The foundation is the group's cloud strategy, which has set ambitious transformation goals at the group level and in each country. This provided the impetus for the transformation, and allowed a methodical transition from analysis of the full application portfolio, through the first pilot migrations, and later pre-qualification of the application portfolio for the cloud, to individual projects with each bank defining the target solution architectures. The engineering work then proceeded without delay.
Operationalisation of the strategy was also a key objective. The aim of the analysis phase was to build a migration backlog as soon as possible, conduct a financial analysis of the end-to-end transformation and ensure that the banks and group technology centres had competent people on board to carry out the work. RBI started implementation immediately, so it’s already benefiting from the migration.
"The decision on cloud transformation was a strategic one. We and the board decided we didn't want to have to analyse each application from scratch when deciding whether to move it to the cloud. We created a kind of roadmap: a set of procedures, instructions and guidelines on how to proceed with technology implementations, and we stick to the agreements we made once and for all. This kind of systematic and global approach greatly simplifies and accelerates any digital initiative.”
"The decision on cloud transformation was a strategic one. We and the board decided we didn't want to have to analyse each application from scratch when deciding whether to move it to the cloud. We created a kind of roadmap: a set of procedures, instructions and guidelines on how to proceed with technology implementations, and we stick to the agreements we made once and for all. This kind of systematic and global approach greatly simplifies and accelerates any digital initiative.”
Benefits from the cloud
The biggest benefits include accelerated time-to-market for new products and services, and greater transparency. The cloud allows software to be developed and rolled out to customers quickly
Greater cost transparency: the cloud gives you full, transparent and unambiguous information about how your software is performing and what costs it is incurring, allowing you to be aware of the situation and react to changes immediately
A better workplace for architects and engineers
Greater resiliency, including better cyber security and streamlined processes
The ability to offer newer and more advanced services to customers
The cloud is the future of the financial sector
Sixty-five percent of financial institutions rate their cloud maturity as low. In comparison, more than half of retail companies consider their cloud sophistication high or medium, according to the PwC Polska report The cloud and its value: Expectations vs. reality – results for the financial sector.
Many financial institutions use the cloud selectively, moving just a small number of processes – usually less important ones. This approach means cloud investments do not deliver the expected business results. Projects are often limited to placing remote working tools, management reporting or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in the cloud. According to PwC research, it is only after 40% of systems have been migrated that banks can achieve cost efficiencies, optimise their structures and realise benefits.
Another problem is viewing the public cloud mainly or exclusively from the perspective of savings. For two-thirds of respondents, cost optimisation is the primary objective of cloud transformation, ignoring benefits such as those described above.
Regulators, and some executives, have for years been reluctant to embrace cloud computing in the financial sector. Today, those who say “we don't want to experiment” are in the minority.
The new industry mantra is: the cloud is the future of finance!
But there is a long road from declarations to investment.
"On average, digital leaders in the financial industry achieve 19% higher profits than those who have not yet migrated to the cloud. They also report around 70% fewer critical infrastructure breakdowns. The conclusion? Cloud computing pays off, but you need to exceed the minimum threshold of 40% of systems moved to the cloud."
"On average, digital leaders in the financial industry achieve 19% higher profits than those who have not yet migrated to the cloud. They also report around 70% fewer critical infrastructure breakdowns. The conclusion? Cloud computing pays off, but you need to exceed the minimum threshold of 40% of systems moved to the cloud."> - Mariusz Chudy, Partner, PwC.
PwC supports Raiffeisen Bank's cloud transformation
Polish banks other financial institutions are just embarking on the adventure of digital transformation and have a lot of catching up to do, especially when compared with other industries.
PwC has made developing such services a priority, significantly expanding its team of Cloud experts, with a target of 500 people in the next few years. PwC Polska already has more than 2,000 technology specialists for IT services.
The value that cloud providers bring
"The cloud benefits every organisation that uses it. A study carried out on our behalf shows that greater cloud adoption and meeting the EU's 'Road to the Digital Decade' plan could add PLN 491 billion to Poland's GDP by 2030. These benefits are also recognised by banks of all sizes, which are accelerating innovation through the cloud."
"The cloud benefits every organisation that uses it. A study carried out on our behalf shows that greater cloud adoption and meeting the EU's 'Road to the Digital Decade' plan could add PLN 491 billion to Poland's GDP by 2030. These benefits are also recognised by banks of all sizes, which are accelerating innovation through the cloud."
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