features of Azure for Banking & Finance Banking and Finance on Azure Cloud
October 25, 2019 02:00 PM

How Azure is used in Banking and Financial Services

The Banking & Financial Services sector is one of the most rapidly transforming areas in terms of adapting innovative digital solutions that are beneficial to both, banks & financial institutions as well as their customers.

Digital transformation in any sector comes with many challenges, but these are far outweighed by the rewards. This is why it is important to go about the process with intelligent planning and expertise. As banks & financial institutions strive to deliver elevated customer experiences, drive real-time payments, optimize risk management, and meet financial regulations, they seek out creative, trustworthy partners who can provide them with agile and versatile solutions.

Azure is the ideal platform to innovate new banking ecosystems and deliver highly personalized experiences. Azure enables banking and other financial organizations to:


  • Transform customer experiences
  • Simplify regulatory compliance
  • Optimize risk management
  • Use cloud resources to extend on-premises capacity on demand
  • Accelerate decisions with rapid risk analysis and deep insights
  • Simplify data management and decrease costs, to leverage advances in artificial intelligence

The Azure platform is fast becoming the most trusted cloud for the banking & finance industry, mainly because it is being delivered by people who truly understand the needs of the financial world. This combination of vast expertise with Azure’s cutting-edge cloud-based services gives you a highly capable team that can drive digital transformation faster, while also minimizing risks.

Salient features of Azure for Banking & Finance

Simplify data management & optimize costs

As the digital landscape for the banking and financial industry faces rapid changes, data ingestion is also increasing exponentially. This is resulting in banks and financial institutions looking for fast, innovative, and secure ways to store, analyze and use this valuable data.

Through the implementation of several technologies and strategies, Azure can help optimize data ingestion, processing, archiving and deletion. Data Ingestion into Azure is a simple process, and depending on its type, structure, and other factors, there are various data stores available to store the data. Data solutions are available beyond SQL Server and SQL Azure to include 3rd party databases.

Organizing and effectively using this stored data is simple, with Azure services like Databricks and Data Factory. Archival storage is also available for the long-term storage of rarely-accessed data, which can be deleted on a rolling cycle if needed.

Hasten decision making with rapid risk analysis and deep insights

Microsoft Azure can be effectively leveraged to augment existing risk grid compute resources and optimize the cost and speed of risk grid computing workloads.

Most organizations have an existing in-house risk computing grid in use. If your grid was developed internally, you should consider Azure Batch to easily extend the grid. A good place to start is to extend current on-premises solutions by replicating the existing processing application logic and running it as a Batch job in Azure. This may require a networking solution for joining the Azure Batch compute nodes to the on-premises network, depending on the application's functionality.

To mitigate security, speed, and connection reliability concerns, connect your on-premises network to Azure using Azure ExpressRoute or a VPN Gateway.

Simplify security & compliance

Azure lets you take advantage of the latest in security innovation, with the broadest compliance coverage of any cloud provider. A dedicated program for financial services compliance also simplifies the approach to regulatory compliance. Get support for the right to audit, transparency in operations, automated audits, and self-reporting. Also, optimize financial crime prevention across your environment, and unify security management. It is important to understand all applicable regulations, conduct risk assessments and decide on the best way to configure the online services.

Microsoft can help guide you in developing a risk governance model, understand the regulation, conduct risk assessments, and configure online services.

 

In a nutshell

Azure lets you empower customers through simple, instant, and secure interactions, customized to their needs, with seamless experiences across channels, products, and services.

Choose Azure to:

Address the trends and challenges currently disrupting the banking and finance markets. Optimize operations by implementing the latest technologies, including machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Adopt tools and strategies that empower your employees and engage your clients with a more personalized experience.

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