Why Banks Are Slow to Embrace Cloud Computing

In North America, banks handle only 12 percent of their tasks on the cloud, but that could double in the next two years, the consulting firm Accenture said in a survey. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said the bank needed to adopt new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud technology “as fast as possible.”

Updated 

Jan. 3, 2022, 1:15 p.m. ET

Wells Fargo plans to move to data centers owned by Microsoft and Google over several years; Morgan Stanley is also working with Microsoft. Bank of America has saved $2 billion a year in part by building its own cloud. Goldman said in November that it would team up with Amazon Web Services to give clients access to mountains of financial data and analytical tools.

Cloud services enable banks to rent data storage and processing power from providers including Amazon, Google or Microsoft, which have their own data centers dotted around the globe. After moving to the cloud, banks can access their data on the internet and use the tech companies’ computing capacity when needed, instead of running their own servers year-round.

Seeing a big opportunity to sell cloud-computing services to Wall Street, some tech giants have hired former bankers who can use their knowledge of the rules and constraints under which banks operate to pitch the industry.

Scott Mullins, AWS’s head of business development for financial services, previously worked at JPMorgan and Nasdaq. Yolande Piazza, vice president for financial…

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