Global banks including Bank of America, Europe’s BN Paribas, and MUFG Bank have been working with IBM on different efforts to elevate the financial sector. The technology company has been beefing up its IBM Cloud Financial Services to serve the growing demand and new essentials in the banking sector.

“With major financial institutions and technology partners joining our financial services cloud, IBM is establishing confidence within the industry and around the globe that the IBM public cloud, equipped with industry-leading encryption capabilities, is the enterprise cloud for all highly regulated industries, including financial services healthcare, telco, airlines and more,” said Howard Boville, SVP, IBM Cloud.

BNP Paribas will join the ecosystem of financial institutions and more than 30 new technology providers adopting IBM Cloud for Financial Services as an anchor client in Europe to support its first dedicated cloud in Europe to be GDPR compliant. The bank will utilize a dedicated cloud, developed and managed by IBM, that will leverage IBM public cloud technologies, including Keep Your Own Key (KYOK) encryption capabilities.

IBM Cloud 2020: Hybrid cloud key to digital shift amid COVID-19

IBM launches free platform offers AI, cloud, cybersecurity lessons

“IBM Cloud for Financial Services helps us to further our transformation journey to the cloud and migrate mission-critical workloads with confidence knowing that we can meet the regulatory standards established for the industry,” said Bernard Gavgani, CIO, BNP Paribas.

Japan

Japan’s MUFG Bank plans to explore the deployment of IBM Cloud for Financial Services in Japan. The bank has been shifting its IT workload to cloud for years, with a strong focus on keeping data secure and mitigating operational risks on this new and fast-changing technology platform.

“We believe IBM Cloud for Financial Services will be suited to help Japanese financial institutions redirect their efforts to maintain legacy systems toward digital reinvention in the era of new normal,” said Hiroki Kameda, Managing Corporate Executive Group CIO of MUFG.

Cloud advisory council

For its part, Bank of America collaborated with IBM for the availability of IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services.

The IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services establishes a new generation of cloud for enterprises with common operational criteria and streamlined compliance controls framework specifically for the financial services industry. As this is in development, IBM also announced the formation of the Financial Services Cloud Advisory Council to support and advise on the ongoing advancement of this effort.

The council will be focused on bringing major financial institutions together to help drive the strategic evolution of cloud security in this highly regulated sector. Boville will join Tony Kerrison, CTO of Bank of America in the council.

Central to the development of the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, IBM collaborated with Bank of America and Promontory, an IBM business unit focused on the financial services regulatory compliance consulting, to establish a set of cloud security and compliance control requirements as the basis of its policy framework, which will allow financial institutions to confidently host key applications and workloads.

“IBM is creating a platform with the goal that financial services institutions can address their regulatory requirements while creating a collaborative ecosystem that helps enable banks and their providers to confidently transact,” Boville said.