European financial institutions initiate cooperation to ensure long-term compliant public cloud ecosystem
European Cloud User Coalition (ECUC) established
- The European Cloud User Coalition is established to strengthen the public cloud ecosystem for the entire European financial industry
- Primary objective is to develop a joint position on common challenges and solutions with Cloud Services Providers
- As a first step the ECUC will publish a Paper where these challenges are identified
Cloud computing is a key strategic technology for the digital transformation of the European financial sector. So far private clouds have been widely used, but public cloud solutions are becoming increasingly important due to their flexibility and scalability, as well as the high-quality security and resilience standards.
Therefore, leading European financial institutions have taken the initiative to establish the European Cloud User Coalition (ECUC). Amongst others Allied Irish Banks, BAWAG Group., Belfius Bank, Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Börse AG, EFG Bank AG, Erste Group Bank, Euroclear, ING Groep N.V., KBC Bank NV, Swedbank AB and UniCredit S.p.A. have joined the ECUC to ensure and enable secure cloud applications for the European financial industry as a whole.
Besides winning new members ECUCs objective is to jointly agree on security standards and best practices for the use of cloud technology for European financial players. On that basis the high European regulatory and data protection standards will be better enforced with non-European cloud providers as well. As a result, financial institutions will in the long term be more independent in their technology selection, thus strengthening competition.
As a first step, ECUC will publish a paper with requirements for cloud services during 2021. The paper will consider all aspects of the basic European regulation and the data localisation provision, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements.
Euroclear group is the financial industry’s trusted provider of post trade services. At the core, the group provides settlement, safe-keeping and servicing of domestic and cross-border securities for bonds, equities and derivatives to investment funds. Euroclear is a proven, resilient capital market infrastructure committed to delivering risk-mitigation, automation and efficiency at scale for its global client franchise.
The Euroclear group includes Euroclear Bank - which is rated AA+ by Fitch Ratings and AA by Standard & Poor’s - as well as Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear Finland, Euroclear France, Euroclear Nederland, Euroclear Sweden and Euroclear UK & Ireland. The Euroclear group settled the equivalent of EUR 837 trillion in securities transactions in 2019, representing 239 million domestic and cross-border transactions and held an average of EUR 30.1 trillion in assets for clients.
For more information about Euroclear, please visit www.euroclear.com.