3 Ways the Cloud Drives Financial Inclusion

Thanks to our global network, Alibaba Cloud has helped many financial service organizations reach out to new markets and customers, helping them scale and secure their financial products in the cloud.

At Alibaba Cloud, we’re passionate about connecting the world and using technology to break down barriers. That’s one of the reasons that we love to work with the financial services community – helping these businesses drive a new wave of digital solutions to give everyone access to the financial products they require.

Combined with the surge in mobile phone penetration, the cloud has unlocked a wealth of new opportunities for financial services companies to develop and deploy inclusive banking products, helping them reach every customer.

No. 1: Introducing a New, Fast Infrastructure

The cloud provides financial services companies with a new way to run their IT infrastructure. Rather than relying on on-premise solutions, organizations can seamlessly operate and scale with the cloud.

There’s no need to commission, deploy or maintain any physical servers. Instead, businesses can pick target regions and scale up with a few clicks.

The Alibaba Cloud global network operates across 80 availability zones and in 25 regions around the world with more global regions set to follow.

You also get guaranteed quality of service. When it comes to your financial web applications, for example, our distributed Content Delivery Network is built on top of a carrier network to solve any Internet congestion issues and speed up access to your apps.

Using edge node server clusters in different regions, this replaces traditional data transmission technologies that are centered on web servers. Instead, CDN distributes user requests to the most suitable nodes, allowing the fastest possible retrieval of requested content with a 120 Tbps of total bandwidth output capacity.

The scalability of the cloud also helps. While other traditional products tend to have ‘peaks’ at certain times of the day, mobile devices can be used 24/7. The cloud can accommodate peaks and dips in demand, without a costly overprovision. This is an important capability as smartphone use is expected to hit 74% in Africa and the Middle East by 2025 and 78% in Latin America.

No. 2: Cost Matters

Research reveals almost half of banks believe the cloud will decrease costs. Another study reveals 62% of financial services leaders believe the cloud will increase future revenues.

This is because the cloud comes with a highly efficient cost model, allowing financial services organizations to move away from a large CapEx with expensive up-front investments. Instead, they can embrace an OpEx model, which requires a smaller monthly subscription and does not come with any excessive O&M overheads.

Given the disruption that financial services industry has seen over the last few years, this is an important benefit. Competition is rife as FinTechs grow and traditional banks need to keep up, launching their own digital products.

The issue of cost is especially important for financial inclusion where such products must be delivered at low cost to the customer. The World Bank estimates around 60% of unbanked individuals in Latin America cite cost as the reason they don’t have accounts.

At Alibaba Cloud, you can choose between a pay-as-you-go or monthly subscription. What’s more, our FinTech Incentive Plan, for example, can reduce the cost of adopting the cloud by up to $5,000. Just submit your application and one of our dedicated account managers will be in touch.

No. 3: Security Guaranteed

Alibaba Cloud provides end-to-end enterprise security on the cloud across your applications, data, platform and user accounts. For financial services businesses, guaranteed security is key to protect their valuable and sensitive information.

For example, we recently collaborated with UBK, the fintech venture studio and fund spun out of UnionBank of the Philippines.

Xpanse, UBX’s new open finance platform, is using our eKYC (Electronic Know Your Customer) solution to help financial institutions in the Philippines boost their business efficiency and reinforce system security through digitalising the identity verification process.

Our Digital Credit Lending also allows financial organizations to dynamically develop, train, and deploy credit risk and fraud risk models to decide digital lending applications in real-time and control risks. This is an important use case for emerging markets where customers may need access to credit but financial institutions need to balance this availability with stringent credit checking mechanisms.

In summary, financial organizations can modernize their operations in the cloud, allowing them to develop and deploy new products to help promote widespread financial inclusion.

Alibaba Cloud helps financial service organizations to scale and succeed in the cloud. If you’d like to find out more contact one of our team, today.

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3 Ways the Cloud Drives Financial Inclusion

No. 1: Introducing a New, Fast Infrastructure

No. 2: Cost Matters

No. 3: Security Guaranteed

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