4 out of 10 Financial Companies Use Cloud... Higher Usage in Insurance Companies, Low in Small and Micro Finance

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyo-jin] The use of cloud computing by financial companies is gradually expanding.

The Financial Supervisory Service announced on the 19th that, based on a survey conducted in June this year on the status of cloud computing usage among 110 major financial companies including banks, securities firms, insurance companies, and savings banks, 42 companies, accounting for 38.2% of the total, are using cloud computing in 145 tasks.

This represents an increase of 23 companies and 17.3 percentage points compared to the end of 2017.

The survey was conducted on 22 banks, 21 securities firms, 20 insurance companies, 30 small and microfinance companies such as savings banks, and 17 electronic financial companies.

Cloud computing refers to a computing environment where IT resources are flexibly provided as needed over the internet by specialized providers instead of building IT infrastructure directly.

There was no significant difference in usage rates by region, but the usage rate among insurance companies (50.0%) was relatively high, while that of small and microfinance companies (26.7%) was relatively low.

It is most commonly used for internal tasks such as email, accounting, and human resources, and is also highly utilized for customer services such as marketing and events.

Foreign global companies such as Amazon and Microsoft occupy 66.9% of the cloud market in the financial sector. Although domestic cloud providers’ technology has recently grown rapidly, the Financial Supervisory Service explained that usage in the financial sector remains low (14.5%).

The "Act on the Development of Cloud Computing and Protection of Users" was enacted in 2015, and cloud computing was permitted in the financial sector in October 2016. The scope of use was expanded to the entire system in January last year.

The Financial Supervisory Service stated, "We expect demand for important tasks such as electronic finance and data analysis to increase compared to the current level," and added, "Due to changes in the working environment such as the spread of remote work related to COVID-19, demand for cloud services supporting remote meetings and collaboration will also increase."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.