Deciding to move to cloud can be daunting for risk leaders given the normally risk adverse nature of the business. However, many of the technologies underpinning cloud computing have been around for decades and have been proven to be extremely reliable. In addition, even the Australian regulators, with APRA at the forefront, encourage organisations to innovate around their technology. Yes, this must be done in a measured way, but using cloud is a well understood undertaking. Moving an application portfolio to cloud involves deciding which applications can be simply re-hosted or re-platformed and which need deeper work by re-architecting them or converting them to software-as-a-service models. By taking this measured approach, organisations can take most of the risk out of transformation and do so incrementally to minimise disruption.

By creating a Risk Data Hub eco-system with a focus on data-mesh and data products, organisations can benefit from a modern data architecture by:

• Having improved access to and understanding of data.Having trusted and reliable information, managed through data quality and governance.
• Having better compliance with regulatory requirements (such as BCBS239).
• Reducing the cost of finding and rectifying remediation issues.
• Having much higher self-service for business users instead of relying on IT projects.

The key difference here is that better organisation of data, enrichment in a central place and better data serving capabilities significantly increase effectiveness. It is far easier to self-serve to find data, create new reports or insights and use these insights in decisioning.

Moving to a service-based model requires a shift from “assets” or “platforms” and re-define the Risk business as a set of business services. Once these business services are defined, they can be linked to appropriate application services and subsequently to infrastructure services. The whole point of moving to service-orientation is that organisations gain the ability to manage and operate the business functions in a much more flexible and visible manner. This ultimately results in much more control over how to execute each individual service, how to scale them, whether to automate them or how to monitor them. This approach offers the ultimate approach in business control and configurability and creates the ability for businesses to alter how they operate rapidly to match external demands.

In the current climate, organisations need to be smarter in how they design their roadmaps. It is prudent to spend the time upfront on designing the right architecture, operating models and a holistic roadmap which can then be used to prioritise new initiatives. Incremental delivery and a steady progression to the desired goals is far more doable than a traditional, big-bang transformation.

Get in touch with the team at Deloitte to discuss how to take advantage of these opportunities in your business. We have the experience and the accelerators to support our clients through a range of delivery models.