Hsbc’s Cloud Strategy

Ian Haynes, CTO - Global Cloud Services, HSBC (NYSE: HSBC)

Every industry is going through a digital transformation, including Financial Services. New technologies offer significant opportunities which companies need to embrace to avoid falling behind. One of HSBC’s four strategic priorities is to ‘digitise at scale’ and we have made great strides in this area in recent years. We continue to invest significantly in technology, including leveraging Cloud technologies, to accelerate digital transformation in a fast and agile way.

The power of Cloud enables HSBC to leverage more scale, speed, resilience, innovation and improved data management. Cloud drives efficiencies with a more flexible and simplified cost model, and lower carbon footprint, making use of industry leading technology from Google, Amazon, Microsoft and AliBaba. We adopt a multi-cloud approach to meet our needs for exit strategy, competition, access to various different vendor strengths and geographical coverage.

Ultimately our use of Cloud allows us to deliver better products to our customers, more quickly and with lower costs. And the elastic nature of Cloud means that we can create capacity whenever we need it. Banking processes that used to take days or weeks now take minutes. The Cloud also enables us to bring data together and use the latest analytics capabilities to deliver smarter and faster insights, to make more informed decisions about how we serve our customers and stakeholders. For example, Kinetic is HSBC’s mobile banking app for small businesses in the UK, built on the Cloud. Users benefit from account opening in minutes, cash flow forecasting and business insights.

We adopt a
multi-cloud approach to meet our needs for exit strategy, competition, access
to various different vendor strengths and geographical coverage

Cloud efficiency is particularly important to HSBC, in many ways, including the contribution it could have towards the bank’s climate strategy. We have set out an ambitious plan to prioritise financing and investment that supports the transition to a net zero global economy. At the heart of the plan is a pledge to reduce financed emissions from our portfolio of customers to net zero by 2050 or sooner, in line with the Paris Agreement goals. We also aim to achieve net zero in our own operations and supply chain by 2030 or sooner.

Our Cloud providers share our ambition to reduce carbon emissions and drive a more sustainable future. Cloud will accelerate the delivery of our net zero goals by harnessing industry-leading innovation and data centre efficiency, which can be up to 80 percent more efficient than using our own data centres. Not only do Cloud providers use less water and less energy, but the energy comes mainly from renewable like solar and wind. The most important benefit is that by using an optimised consumption model, when we’re not using the Cloud we use zero energy.

HSBC’s net zero commitments are a key driver of our Cloud adoption strategy. In 2021, we engaged with our Cloud partners to better understand our carbon footprint on Cloud and collaborate towards more efficient application development. They are also helping to upskill our IT community through sustainability learning sessions, as well as sharing research and experience. In 2022, sustainability is going to be a key agenda item in HSBC’s Cloud adoption book of work.