Independent Banker - June 2023 - 27

Next: August recess advocacy tips 
notes Charles Potts, chief innovation
officer for ICBA. " It's the classic Oz
situation: Pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain. "
A sample of cloud's greatest hits
Below are some of the critical
advantages the cloud provides for
community banks and their customers:
Scalability. " What's really
important about cloud technology
today is the scalability, " says Potts.
He explains that a suite of offerings
can grow along with a bank's needs
and aspirations, without leaving
behind latent infrastructure in need
of addressing.
Using the cloud, community banks
can enter new markets and lines of
business far more quickly. In other
words, today's bankers rarely find their
strategic reach exceeds their grasp.
" All of the things that bankers may
want to achieve as part of their strategy,
cloud-based technology is designed to
make happen, " Potts says.
A more level playing field.
" There are lots of community banks
across the country that can build really
cool things without putting in all the
infrastructure costs, because of public
cloud computing, " says Christian
Ruppe, chief innovation officer for
$3 billion-asset Colony Bank in
Fitzgerald, Ga. " Cloud computing lets
us build and offer unique concepts. "
" [Cloud banking] is going to allow us to
support our customers when times are bad
and help our customers take advantage of
opportunities when times are good. "
-CHRISTIAN RUPPE, COLONY BANK
One example of a cloud-enabled
feature is TaxStatus. Late last year,
Colony Bank signed on with TaxStatus to
relieve some hassles for loan applicants.
Now, an individual applying for a
mortgage or business loan can check a
box that will grant Colony permission to
import required tax documents directly
from the IRS.
QUICK STAT
20.3%
The finance cloud market's
compound annual growth rate
from now until 2030
Source: Grand View Research
" Our customers are saving 15 to 30
minutes on their applications because
they don't have to go and track down
their taxes from the past two or three
years, " says Ruppe. " We're able to plug
[TaxStatus] into our existing application
because of how flexible we're able to be
with the cloud, and we're able to do it at
a cost that makes sense. "
Tighter privacy controls. Coastal's
MacLean sees great behind-the-curtain
benefits to how her bank uses cloud
technology to protect customer data.
MacLean is keenly aware that for
small business owners, digitizing the
lending process " makes a big difference, "
because applicants can submit
information from anywhere without
taking precious time off work.
For the bank, automating the capture
of information in a " privacy-first " way
would be nearly impossible without the
public cloud. " It's very difficult to mask
or obfuscate data at scale and to do it
reliably if you're not relying on a cloudscale
platform, " she says.
Cloud from Cornerstone Advisors
urges all financial institutions to adopt
a " cloud-first " mentality. " Institutions
today have millions of solutions
deployed in the traditional manner,
so this change is not going to happen
quickly, " he says. " But we're big
believers that as an institution replaces
or augments technology, solutions
should be with cloud-first software. "
Quicker off the mark
Ruppe agrees, noting that " the ultimate
dream " made possible by cloud
technology is " the ability to react more
quickly than anyone else. "
For example, when the need to issue
PPP loans hit, it took many community
banks three to six months to have
online loan processes up and running.
With the full firepower of cloud
technology, a bank like Colony could
respond much faster to catastrophes,
Ruppe says. A bank could post to its
website a loan application that includes
automated decisioning and cloud
tools necessary for populating key
information, allowing an entirely new
loan application process to be rolled
out in just a week or two.
Cloud banking, he concludes, " is
going to allow us to support our
customers when times are bad and
help our customers take advantage of
opportunities when times are good. "
Elizabeth Judd is a writer in Maryland.
independentbanker.org // 27
http://www.independentbanker.org
Independent Banker - June 2023

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