How the cloud improves customer experiences in the financial services industry

Cloud storage has been growing in popularity in recent years. What once seemed like an abstract concept is now the norm in people's lives, both in the business sector and in consumers' everyday behaviors. Because companies have increasingly transferred financial activities and customer experiences to the cloud over the past few years, transaction in the cloud has become something people simply expect. 

Financial services companies benefit from offering their customers and team members digital ways to transact business and conduct work in the cloud. Most financial services companies are on a journey of moving to the cloud, but some are further along than others.

What drives financial service institutions to the cloud?

One of the primary drivers of cloud adoption in the financial services industry is that cloud-based banking operations have rapidly become the standard. If they’re not in the cloud, they can’t compete in a crowded market.

But financial services institutions have additional reasons to move to the cloud. Here are the top factors driving cloud adoption in financial services. 

1. Customer acquisition and retention

Your business probably hopes to both retain and gain new customers. Your customers, in turn, like having the freedom to choose how they manage their money. The ability to bank in the cloud makes your financial services company attractive to current and prospective customers by offering greater convenience and flexibility. 

You can also expand your cloud offerings over time to provide customers with greater benefits. The more cloud services you provide, the easier it is to satisfy customers and keep them banking with you.

2. Quick deployment

Speed is important in the financial services sector. Keeping up with industry technology trends is beneficial for staying competitive and adding value for your customers.

By taking advantage of the cloud, your company can more easily stay informed on all the latest services and offerings. You can also update your software as soon as new versions roll out. The ability to quickly deploy services to market is one of the most popular reasons financial services institutions turn to the cloud.

3. Agile innovation

The cloud offers financial services institutions the flexibility they need to stay competitive in a changing marketplace. Using the cloud, you can meet your customers or potential customers where they are on their financial journey. You'll have the computing power to tailor each client's experience to their needs while maintaining a cohesive brand.

Financial services companies can always position themselves to embrace change. The cloud gives the versatility needed for agile innovation so you can keep satisfying your customers' needs. Financial services institutions rely on the cloud when they need an adaptable model for their solutions. 

4. Regulatory compliance

Financial services companies follow regulatory mandates. When your customers trust you with their most sensitive information, staying on top of these responsibilities is critical. Cloud technology makes achieving and maintaining compliance simpler, especially in the face of ever-changing rules and laws.

As new policies roll out, cloud services self-update and implement the necessary changes to stay compliant. As a result, your financial services company can worry less about changing policy to follow new codes and focus more on providing excellent, regulation-compliant services to your customers. You can feel confident your product offerings and stay in line with the law when you transition your financial services company to the cloud. 

5. Cybercrime prevention

Cybercrime has been rising in recent years. Data breaches exposed nearly 15 million records in the third quarter of 2022 — a significant increase from earlier that year. Because people rely on the internet more and more to provide essential services, they're at risk of becoming victims of cyberattacks, including having their personal and financial information compromised.

Financial services companies are always looking for ways to increase security and combat cyberattacks. Rather than risking costly data breaches, financial services institutions turn to the cloud. The cloud uses state-of-the-art technology to protect data and reduce risks, making it an appealing option for financial services companies looking to increase their online security. 

Benefits of the cloud for financial services institutions

Every tool a business uses should add value to the organization. Otherwise, it's outdated or cumbersome. The cloud offers a modern approach to your operations, giving you the tools you need for efficient, high-quality services. Read on to discover the benefits of cloud adoption in financial services. 

Improved speed and agility

Using a legacy system to launch a new landing page is expensive and time-consuming. When time is money, you need a solution that will save you both. That's where cloud technology comes into play. 

Cloud adoption in financial services improves your agility and adaptability, making it easier for your organization to respond to changes in the market. You then spend less time testing new products, shortening your product deployment cycle, and gaining an edge over your competition. The cloud makes all these activities faster and more effective within a condensed time frame. 

The cloud also helps financial services companies innovate their services and launch beta versions of new products. After an initial release of a cloud-based service or product, companies can then seamlessly update these offerings to the latest versions and quickly address technical failures. 

Lower operational and ownership costs

Building infrastructure to handle new services is expensive for any financial services company. Cloud technology offers an alternative by allowing your financial services company to launch new services using existing apps. Rollout becomes more efficient, and your organization enjoys lower operational costs along the way. 

The cloud's flexibility also allows your financial services company to scale vertically and horizontally with ease. Because you can choose which services you pay for, you can save money by unsubscribing to services you don't need. This arrangement allows you to focus more on your core competencies and trim away anything that doesn't add value to your organization.

Enhanced customer experience

Every financial services company wants to give its customers the best experience possible. Customer service keeps loyal clients around and attracts new ones. Consumers who are dissatisfied with their current financial services provider will seek a better experience elsewhere. The cloud can turn your financial services company into the solution your potential customers have been looking for. 

Consider the possibilities cloud technology can unlock to enhance your customer service: 

• It enables customers to conduct banking from their smartphones
• It allows your engineering team to customize your services using the cloud
• Cloud computing in the financial services industry provides a satisfying end-to-end experience for customers, enhancing and streamlining each transaction 

Stricter security standards

Cloud technology has come a long way — enhanced security is now one of the cloud's most significant strengths. 

Public cloud servers owned by recognized tech brands ensure your financial services company can transfer experiences to the cloud without worrying about security. These large companies typically invest vast amounts of money into server security, far more than a single financial services company could afford to put toward their own cybersecurity.

How does the cloud benefit customers in financial services?

Consider the changing financial and business landscape of today's markets. People spend more time online for business and pleasure than ever before. The average customer is growing more comfortable using virtual services for many of their needs and wants. As people use their smartphones to shop, browse the web, and monitor their finances, they seek simplicity. Today's consumers want a cloud-enabled platform where they can track their finances and engage with digital banking safely and easily. 

The multifaceted advantages of the cloud change the game for the financial services industry and its customers. But whether your financial services company has already adopted cloud technology or has yet to make up its mind, you should understand that switching to the cloud will also benefit your customers. 

It all comes down to providing the best experience possible to retain your current clients and attract new ones. With the cloud, you can satisfy your customers' desires for an easy-to-use platform that works for them. They want a tool that they're comfortable using to interact with their financial situations. 

To realize their goals, your customers look for several benefits from your digital financial services. Here are five of the most powerful advantages you can offer people by switching to the cloud. 

1. Faster customer service

Time is money for your financial services company. But the same rule applies to your customers, too. People value their time, so they're looking for digital experiences with their financial services institutions that fit their lifestyle. They want speedy answers to their questions and solutions for their challenges. The cloud puts you in the best position to provide these. 

It can take over a year to roll out fixes to issues using traditional in-house development apps and online services. The cloud speeds development and launch timeframes for new services and products. With the ability to leverage microservices and other virtual infrastructure, you can significantly reduce your speed to market and respond to customer feedback faster than ever.

App development and deployment speed have improved with the cloud. This tech allows you to respond quickly to your customers' requirements, keeping them satisfied. The whole process of customer issue resolution, from development to implementation, is now faster than ever. Established institutions and newcomers in the financial services sector can keep pace with each other and stay competitive when using the cloud to deliver faster customer service. 

2. Protected customer information

Security is one of the top factors customers consider when choosing to trust a financial services company. When you look at that truth in light of today's cybercrime stats, you can see why customers are so concerned about their financial security. The last thing they want is for their personal information to fall into the wrong hands. 

Your onsite IT department works hard to keep your customers' data safe. But every IT professional knows that a single sophisticated phishing email attack can lead to network-wide consequences. Your in-house cybersecurity plan may only go so far in protecting you from these attacks or remedying them after they occur. 

When you use the cloud, you transfer the burden of protecting your systems and your customers' sensitive data to your cloud provider. Your cloud provider follows national and international security standards while employing the best IT professionals to fight against cybersecurity threats. Plus, cloud providers back up your customers' data on several servers spread across geographically diverse regions to make disaster recovery easier. 

3. Improved efficiency

In the hyper-competitive financial services industry, increased efficiency is a priority for your company. The same applies to your customers, who want efficiency in their financial transactions — including the ability to get things done from any device without ever needing to enter a branch or pick up the phone. Sometimes, convenience is the primary factor for a new customer signing up with a financial services institution. Offering cloud-based services will set you apart in this way. 

Behind the scenes, the cloud also improves effectiveness by connecting your financial services company's various branches. Having to wait hours or days for a response when communicating with another location can affect the customer experience, especially when you have offices spread across several different states or countries. With the cloud, collaborative, real-time work happens anywhere in the world. Cloud solutions are institution-wide, which means you can avoid letting an isolated technology error in one branch affect the timelines of another. 

Another way cloud technology improves the overall customer experience is by freeing up your IT department to innovate better products and services. Instead of focusing on a long list of mundane technical activities, your IT team can spend more of its time on mission-critical tasks that add value to your operations. Team members can shift their priorities to get your financial services company ahead of schedule, which will benefit your clients in their quest for increased efficiency. 

4. Creation of online services

Every day, people spend more time online. Consumers today turn to the internet before seeking solutions elsewhere. If your financial services company lacks a robust set of digital offerings, potential customers may go elsewhere to find a service that meets their expectations. Your customers want a simplified, holistic experience with their financial services. Use the cloud to create online services, and you retain customers. 

After you've established a strong foundation in the cloud, you might even take advantage of your cloud provider's digital-native capabilities to experiment with new channels for revenue. Give your customers options for interacting with your financial services. The cloud enables you to provide unparalleled customization options for your online services, which has become essential for customer satisfaction. 

Cloud computing is the cornerstone of creating enhanced online opportunities for your customer. These digital efforts can be far-reaching, like partnering with a big tech company to produce a new service or launching legacy-free services to venture into new possibilities. Knowing what your customers expect from online financial services can help you leverage the cloud to provide the services they're looking for.

5. People-focused operations

Ultimately, your financial services company strives to keep your clients happy. The only way to achieve this is with a people-focused approach, but your legacy system's technical limitations could make this challenging. The cloud's flexibility makes crafting people-focused services simple. 

Personalization is critical. Think of it like this: Customers want to feel like you view them as individuals with unique experiences, wants, and needs instead of cookie-cutter consumers. Even if you set up automated emails or chatbots for customer help, you can configure your cloud technology to take these programs to the next level.

Consider using cloud services in tandem with artificial intelligence and machine learning programs. These programs can produce customized offers and experiences for people based on their behavioral patterns. Because the cloud enables a people-focused approach, your customers receive content relevant to their financial situations. 

Every successful financial services company needs to empower its customers to grow and flourish. Adopting cloud technology can revolutionize how your organization approaches customer service by meeting your customers' evolving expectations. 

Discover the power of the Content Cloud

With a single secure platform for all your content, Box enables you to manage the entire content lifecycle: file creation, co-editing, sharing, e-signature, classification, retention, and so much more. We make it easy for you to collaborate on content with anyone, both inside and outside your organization. Frictionless, enterprise-grade security and compliance are built into our DNA, so you get total peace of mind that your content is protected. And with 1,500+ seamless integrations — as well as a range of native capabilities, like Box Sign — the Content Cloud provides a single content layer that ensures your teams can work the way they want.

The Content Cloud is a game changer for the entire organization, streamlining workflows and boosting productivity across every team. Contact us today, and explore what you can do with Box.

**While we maintain our steadfast commitment to offering products and services with best-in-class privacy, security, and compliance, the information provided in this blogpost is not intended to constitute legal advice. We strongly encourage prospective and current customers to perform their own due diligence when assessing compliance with applicable laws.