The digital economy is expected to contribute 22.6% to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to the Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint (MyDIGITAL).

In preparing Malaysia to become a technology-based economy, developments in the Malaysian fintech space have been supported by the government to strengthen its position as a major player in the industry. Fintech is rapidly becoming a central part of the financial services industry and the future economy.

The Demand for Public Cloud Will Grow

We have all witnessed the adverse impact and aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects will remain, even after the Movement Control Order (MCO) ends. The pandemic needed attention from financial institutions to carefully access their business models. As a result, the demand for public cloud is undoubtedly due to surge.

Inevitably, technology is at the core of this situation. Financial institutions need to re-strategize their approach by tapping into cloud computing as a solution to empower the next phase of growth.

Digital transformation is vital to compete in a crowded marketplace, but the journey is not a one-step process. The first step is security and compliance. Data security has always been a major concern in the fintech industry.

When more financial institutions gradually transfer their businesses onto the cloud, the security strategy needs to be in line with the cloud environment where cloud protection is required to be comprehensively deployed.

Compliance Fulfillment

Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, is committed to facilitating financial institutions to meet the requirements of the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM)’s guidelines while partnering with customers to make their transformation journey from on-premise infrastructure to cloud infrastructure as smooth as possible.

Alibaba Cloud has two data centers in Malaysia, providing a high level of redundancy to customers (in terms of data backup and recovery.) The data centers provide storage of transactional and sensitive information only within the territory of Malaysia.

Alibaba Cloud’s security architecture is composed of three layers – application security, data security, and platform security. It is a fast, safe, and reliable operation on Internet-related assets, such as websites and apps.

Remote Services on Reliable Infrastructures

“Remote Clients and Services” is the second step of the journey. The ongoing shift in systems and mindsets will impact every aspect of financial institutions’ operations. During this step, Alibaba Cloud helps build remote accounts and authentication systems and provides sophisticated and ready-to-use for a faster go-to-market for financial mobile applications.

The next part is all about “Cloud First, Cloud-Native” Financial institutions can refine development processes and redesign applications using Alibaba’s infrastructure on the cloud model so the applications are sufficiently flexible.

Financial institutions will be empowered with digital intelligence and business insights to encourage data-driven decision-making by leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies. This is the fourth step of the journey, “Data-Driven and Reality Proven”.

The last step of the digital transformation journey is when financial institutions are benefited through a new eco-system or value chain.

Empowering Malaysian Financial Institutions Is the Priority

In essence, as the first global public cloud platform in Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud provides Malaysian financial institutions a local choice to build their businesses and run their applications on a robust, reliable, and (most importantly) secure cloud platform.

The company has dedicated a local team of solutions architects and professional consultants to provide services from cloud consulting to after-sales support, helping customers and businesses of all sizes as they move to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud enables its customers in Malaysia to realize their full economic potential and many of them have shared their success stories on how they leverage Alibaba Cloud to grow and improve their business.

Cloud computing is gaining traction in the financial and banking industry. Soon, the industry will look very different from what it is today. For starters, The Malaysian FinTech Industry: Guidance and Solutions is a new whitepaper released by Alibaba Cloud that explains why it is crucial for financial institutions to move to the cloud. Cloud computing and its flexibility and versatility might just be the answer that financial institutions need.

The 11.11 Special Offer

Alibaba Group’s 13th annual 11. 11 Global Shopping Festival is underway and everyone has witnessed its success in previous years. The Festival demonstrates the undeniable, rapid acceleration of technology adoption worldwide, with cloud computing reigning as the true hero (being the technology that underpins e-commerce platforms).

In conjunction with 11.11, Alibaba will offer more discounts for cloud solution packages or single products. Be sure to check out the special offers and grab affordable and easy-to-deploy cloud services for all your needs.

Featured image credit: Photo by Esmonde Yong on Unsplash