Independent Banker - June 2022 - 25

Next: Rally your remote workforce 
can't be deployed elsewhere, " Baltzell
says. " By moving to the cloud, it
gives banks more agility to act on
opportunities as they arise and be
quicker to market. "
Having cloud-based systems
enables community banks to get
answers faster or sell new products
and services faster, says Matt Beecher,
CEO of Neocova in Austin, Texas.
" The industry is going through
a digital banking transformation,
and the next move is real-time
banking, " Beecher says. " It's all about
cloud computing and advanced
technologies, [and] banks are starting
to really recognize this and take
hold of. "
4. Enhanced data storage
By moving servers to the cloud,
community banks can then change or
update those services to use cloudnative
functions, such as databaseas-a-service
and cloud-based storage
accounts, Reeser says.
Adds Beecher: " It's all about speed
and agility-accessing data faster on
the cloud than from on-premises data
storage devices. " Banks can work
from a single source of data, he says,
rather than siloed data storage, which
also expedites reporting information
that is more up-to-date, versus longer
lag times typically associated with
manually creating reports using Excel
sheets or BI tools.
" This also allows a lower cost of
ownership, as cloud storage is a lot
less expensive and more secure, "
Beecher adds. " It also drives
efficiencies of scale. "
5. Savings from easier integration
of third-party solutions
Many cloud service providers, like
Jack Henry, offer additional SaaS
solutions that banks can more easily
integrate into their cloud-based
banking systems than on-premises
" Moving to the cloud allows for more
efficient use of capital, instead of investing a
bunch of capital into on-premises hardware
that then can't be deployed elsewhere. "
-JONATHAN BALTZELL, JACK HENRY & ASSOCIATES INC.
systems, Baltzell says.
" If a bank deploys additional
solutions on their own hardware, they
would have to go through a pretty
lengthy project, " he says, " whereas
they can just acquire solutions from
our cloud environment: Plug it in and
it's ready to go. "
6. Greater actionable insights
that drive revenues
The cloud enables community banks
to obtain greater actionable insights
with more data-rich sources from
within the bank or from third parties,
Beecher says. It allows for greater
scalability and better integration
of other tools, often through APIs
and other functionalities. This, in
turn, helps banks develop better
customer engagement and product
penetration models.
" By leveraging analytical systems,
banks can put the right product in
front of customers at the right time,
increasing their cross-sale ratios, "
he says. " This is driven by more
advanced models using machine
learning and artificial intelligence,
and banks can only do that if they
have a cloud model. "
7. Costs savings from improved
cybersecurity and fraud detection
Community banks can use services
integrated with large cloud providers
like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web
Services to get access to new security
offerings and enhancements without
waiting for a new capital cycle, Reeser
says. Moreover, banks will be able to
better integrate " security assertion
markup language " -the open standard
for authentication between two
parties-and single sign-on solutions
with additional security options and
settings to secure identities.
It's also easier to detect fraud and
false positives as well as BSA/AML
issues, Beecher says. Traditional
models are very manual and slow to
alert, whereas cloud-based banking
systems can easily incorporate
advanced technologies that have to
" live on the cloud, " which expedites
fraud recognition.
8. Cost savings from better
resilience
Cloud-based systems give banks
easier access to advanced disaster
recovery/business continuity
solutions integrated directly with the
cloud, Reeser says.
Adds Baltzell: " Our solutions are
inherently resilient, so banks get the
benefit of disaster recovery solutions
without having to manage multiple
environments themselves. " 
Katie Kuehner-Hebert is a writer
in California.
independentbanker.org Q 25
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Independent Banker - June 2022

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