The financial service industry is highly regulated. Security is a top concern, and not just from a regulatory standpoint — customers demand it.

You often read of the high-profile data breaches in the news, estimating the potential costs in terms of dollars and reputation. This environment has posed a unique challenge for financial service companies as they strive to stay at the forefront of innovation and customer service. Consumers want personalized banking experiences and on-demand services, but to do this well, organizations need the agility, resiliency, elasticity and on-demand provisioning that the cloud offers.

Assima, an innovator in financial services training simulations, joined the IBM Cloud for Financial Services because they saw an opportunity to provide their customers — financial institutions — with personalized and agile service while adhering to strict regulatory and security requirements. This enhanced relationship highlights the best of what IBM and Assima have to offer — peace of mind that training will be done at scale in a secure environment and will meet all security and compliance requirements.

Realistic training for higher ROI

Assima has a long history of working with the financial services industry. They understand the complex regulatory environment that they operate within and the consumer loyalty demands in a highly competitive and quickly evolving market. Assima developed their cloud-based simulated training environments and Data Anonymization functionality to allow institutions to desensitize entire training modules in a few clicks. Not only are these training modules meeting regulatory and security requirements, but they are also hyper-realistic. So much so that employees feel like they’re learning in a live system.

By offering a cloud-based solution, Assima was able to solve the challenges of old training programs. These systems relied on basic screenshots and document-based training tools, so there was often a lag behind the rollout of new application systems. The result was that financial institutions wasted time and resources training employees on the last version of the app.

With Assima running on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, financial institutions can push the next generation of a training tool out faster, accelerating the adoption of new digital tools. This approach saves time and makes employees feel more confident once they enter the real-world environment.

As Assima looks to advance their technology and develop customer solutions, they decided to adopt the IBM Cloud for Financial Services. Doing so allows their customers to access the most up-to-date and secure version of Assima’s solution without straining IT resources.

A cloud designed for the financial services industry

To ease cloud adoption for the financial services industry, IBM developed the IBM Cloud for Financial Services — a highly secure public cloud specifically designed for financial institutions to run complex, data-sensitive workloads and innovate with their ecosystem partners, with confidence and trust. Central to the platform is the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services, with pre-configured, industry-informed security and compliance controls that the cloud and partners adhere to in the cloud to operate securely with bank-sensitive data.

As a result, the IBM Cloud for Financial Services provides all the benefits and flexibility of a public cloud, with plenty of room for innovation and scalability while also providing the security and compliance capabilities partners like Assima require to meet financial services industry regulations on a continuous basis. Adopters can build and modernize applications and solutions in a secure environment to drive innovation for today’s modern banking customer.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services was designed with the world’s largest and most complex financial organizations’ demands in mind. To protect data, it uses IBM’s fourth-generation Confidential Computing capabilities and ‘Keep Your Own Key’ encryption delivered via IBM Hyper Protect Services and backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available. This gives enterprises the ability to retain control of their own encryption keys so clients are the only ones who can control access to their data.  

And with the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center, partners can define compliance profiles and use this dashboard to monitor and strengthen security and compliance postures across workloads. The IBM Cloud for Financial Services enables financial institutions to more quickly and efficiently adopt innovative solutions like Assima’s training tools, with confidence and trust.

A more agile, scalable platform

Agility and flexibility are not often terms you hear when discussing the financial industry’s digital environments. Assima wanted to change that; it saw an opportunity to offer clients services far more efficiently, even within a regulated environment. Adopting the IBM Cloud for Financial Services gave Assima the ability to tear down a significant roadblock to efficiency — the institution’s security vetting process.

Assima was one of the first to join the IBM Cloud for Financial Services ecosystem of ISVs and SaaS providers, which is designed to unlock new revenue opportunities, help banks focus on innovation and accelerate their journey to the cloud while reducing risk and cost of compliance. With Assima as part of this ecosystem, financial institutions leveraging Assima’s solution can speed their demonstration of compliance to auditors and regulators through technology-assured, continuous-compliance and audit-reporting capabilities.