Survey by Thomson Reuters finds a quarter of financial firms expect to use public cloud for the majority of their market data needs within a year, to help create a competitive edge in how they manage financial data.

Financial firms intend to rapidly increase their investment in public cloud to exploit the benefits of the cloud in managing the financial data that powers their business decisions, according to a new global survey of senior technologists and market data managers in the financial services sector. In the survey from the Financial & Risk business of Thomson Reuters, respondents said their firms would be increasing investment in public cloud by over a half, from 30% of IT budgets in 2017 to 47% in 2019.

Over 90% of firms surveyed say they will use public cloud for the majority of their market data needs in less than four years. A quarter (24%) expect to use public cloud for the majority of their market data needs within just one year. Financial firms are fuelled by data, whether to discover profitable new insights or to help them automate their reporting processes and manage costs at a time of intense regulatory pressure.

“The cloud offers a powerful set of tools for the financial community to manage their data needs, and opens up new opportunities to combine public and proprietary data at massive scale with tools like AI and machine learning to solve any number of problems,” says Brennan Carley, Global Head of Enterprise Proposition & Product for the Financial & Risk business at Thomson Reuters. “Financial firms of all sizes can be more agile and innovative using the cloud, as they test investment strategies and enter new markets more quickly.

“Given the sensitive nature of many of their data requirements and the regulatory pressures they face, financial firms have been quite cautious about exploiting public cloud compared to other industries, but these findings show that financial firms are accelerating the cloud plans. The adoption curve may differ depending on whether it’s a small hedge fund or a large bank and whether they are using the data to make trading decisions in real-time or back-testing research hypotheses, but the end point is clear. Financial firms say they are starting to leverage the cloud across their market data infrastructure to help them move faster, grow their business, reduce their costs, and better manage their risks.”

Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk recently announced plans to deliver all its financial data and tools in the cloud.

Source: Thomson Reuters