In 2023, major U.S. banks embarked on extensive cloud migration initiatives, navigating complex regulatory and operational landscapes. Industry leaders underscored the critical importance of compliance and risk management, advocating for cloud adoption to be approached not merely as a technological upgrade but as a comprehensive risk transformation strategy.
Cloud promises agility, scale, and innovation. But in banking, it's a double-edged sword.
Financial institutions stall or fail their cloud programs despite strong executive sponsorship. Legacy processes, fragmented data, and regulatory friction collide with cloud-native architectures. At Coforge, we’ve stepped in to correct more than 50 banking migrations.
Let’s decode the three traps that derail banking cloud journeys and how Coforge helps clients escape them.
(When Lift-and-Shift Becomes Drop-and-Break)
Too many banks rehost apps to the cloud without mapping regulatory boundaries. The result?
The Coforge Fix
“Compliance isn't a checklist; it must be encoded into architecture.”
We tackle this at the foundation:
Client impact: Coforge implemented a cloud-based Core Banking System (CBS) for a leading co-operative bank struggling with RBI compliance gaps, fragmented data controls, and legacy system limitations. The solution embedded automated regulatory guardrails, standardized reporting, and data sovereignty protocols, fully complying with 450+ RBI-mandated reports and $2.7M annual savings.
(When Pay-as-You-Go Becomes Pay-as-You-Bleed)
Cloud is marketed as a cost saver. Yet 72% of enterprises globally exceeded their cloud budgets in 2023, with financial services among the most affected sectors due to unoptimized architectures and poor visibility. IDC estimates that 20–30% of all cloud spending is wasted due to resource sprawl and inefficient provisioning. Here’s why:
The Coforge Fix
“Cost optimization starts before migration, not after go-live.”
We embed FinOps into the migration lifecycle:
Client Impact: Coforge helped a global financial services client reduce monthly cloud consumption costs by 45% through rightsizing VM instances, optimizing storage disks, converting PAYG instances to Reserved Instances, and automating non-production VM schedules.
(When Best-of-Breed Creates Worst-of-Operations)
Most banks retain core systems on-premises while moving digital workloads to the cloud. Sounds strategic. But it introduces:
The Coforge Fix
We bring convergence to fragmented ecosystems.
Escaping these traps requires more than cloud expertise; it requires financial-grade engineering with built-in compliance, performance, and cost control.
| Trap | Common failure mode | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Compliance Risk | Post-migration audit failures | Pre-built regulatory controls embedded in Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates |
| Budget Overruns | Reactive cost-cutting measures | FinOps-by-design with proactive, dynamic cost optimization |
| Hybrid Complexity | Fragmented operations and tools | Unified CloudOps platform with SLAs and cross-cloud synchronization |
The Coforge BFS Stack That Powers Results
We’ve built reusable, proven assets that accelerate and de-risk cloud journeys for banks:
Cloud Migration Is Not an Exit — It’s an Evolution. Banks that treat cloud migration as just a platform switch are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Cloud isn’t just about speed—it’s about control, clarity, and trust at scale. To lead in the next wave of digital banking, institutions must:
At Coforge, we’ve helped BFS clients unlock significant cost savings, modernize safely, and meet aggressive transformation timelines - all without regulatory missteps or runaway costs.
Ready to escape the trap? Explore how Coforge’s Cloud Framework reduces migration risks and delivers resilient outcomes.