According to the study, 82 percent of surveyed firms now operate with hybrid or multi-cloud strategies, aiming to boost flexibility, reduce concentration risk, and support compliance with global regulations. However, 84 percent reported the need to adjust cloud strategies in response to requirements such as the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act and GDPR.
Security continues to dominate concerns, with 47 percent of respondents citing the sophistication of cyberattacks as their top worry. Data privacy and breach risks followed closely behind. Despite these concerns, 92 percent of firms consider operational resilience a critical factor when choosing a cloud provider.
Cloud adoption is already delivering results. Over half of the respondents said they had completed migrations and were seeing value, especially in areas like customer engagement and enterprise-wide data access. Risk management stood out, with 83 percent of users reporting full migration and operational benefits.
Financial institutions are increasingly measuring cloud ROI in terms of scalability (51 percent), revenue growth (47 percent), and security improvements (47 percent). Only 34 percent now use cost savings as their primary benchmark for success, although 61 percent still report reduced IT infrastructure costs, especially in EMEA and APAC regions where regulatory conditions are more complex.
Cloud is also becoming central to artificial intelligence strategies. The survey found that 91 percent of firms are either currently using or planning to use cloud services for AI within the next year. Generative AI, fraud detection, and risk management were the top three areas of focus. In total, 84 percent of respondents said their firm is already somewhat or very advanced in AI implementation, with investment firms leading in deployment.
While Software as a Service remains the leading cloud model at 43 percent, interest is growing in Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service. This trend suggests more firms may shift toward building custom tools and applications internally as AI, analytics, and compliance needs become more complex.
Read more on The Industry Spread
