Why Banks Should Bet Big on High Performance Computing

Financial services companies are charged with some of the most difficult tasks to remain competitive in today’s business landscape. From protecting customer data to providing seamless experiences to staying on top of the latest regulations, these fintechs and financial institutions need vast amounts of compute power to be successful. 

High-performance computing (HPC) systems typically run at speeds more than one million times faster than the fastest commodity desktop, laptop or server systems. HPC is essential to solving large, complex problems in less time than with traditional computing methods, especially with emerging regulations and AI making its way into business strategies.

Tackling Risk and Compliance with HPC 

Everyone interacts with banks in some capacity, which is why it’s critical that financial institutions have the required compute power to meet peak demands. In the same vein, banks need to be prepared for a wide array of external factors that could impact this performance at any given moment. These can include competitive pressures, regulatory reporting, security demands, market swings, data breaches, customer expectations, and more. Financial institutions need to reassess risk and pivot quickly, performing complex calculations constantly. 

To achieve the desired accuracy, models assessing risk need the support of more data and the ability to perform more iterations and computations. This is where HPC comes in - delivering intensive compute power at scale. HPC delivers the performance levels these computationally intensive calculations require, whether located on-premises or in the cloud, and can help organizations address the demands of today’s evolving regulatory standards.

Earlier this year, we saw the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) take effect, requiring financial institutions to re-evaluate their resilience strategies. The legislation is designed to strengthen the operational resilience of the financial sector and prevent cases of global IT outages. With HPC, financial institutions can test their digital operational resilience through stress tests and simulations, identifying and addressing system vulnerabilities.  In addition, HPC allows banks to process and analyze large datasets to deliver timely and accurate regulatory and compliance reporting. 

Accelerating AI with HPC

AI and HPC are two technologies that complement each other perfectly: HPC provides the computing power needed to train complex AI models and allows AI applications to scale efficiently. Similarly, we see AI-guided HPC streaming simulations that are more intelligent and produce greater results. Financial institutions can leverage HPC and AI for Monte Carlo simulations, for example, to help them make more informed decisions on how they can adapt to market movements.

These enterprises are at a critical point where they need to invest in scalable HPC and AI infrastructure to stay ahead of the game. There’s not a one-size fits all approach to AI infrastructure and its key to tailor the right infrastructure for the AI-task at hand. Financial institutions and fintechs need to tap into a platform that’s not only able to handle AI and HPC at scale, but one that’s uniquely tailored for their industry-specific security and compliance needs. An industry-specific cloud platform, for example, that has the security and compliance controls baked-in from the onset alleviates some of the conflicting pressures banks face.

What’s Next?

Fintechs and larger financial institutions are tasked with staying competitive while demonstrating adherence to strict regulations such as DORA. It is up to these organizations to tap into emerging technologies like HPC to ensure their security, compliance, and resiliency strategies are where they need to be. With the support of a cloud provider, like IBM, that can help them balance these needs with innovation, they will be better positioned to maintain consumer trust and ensure they’re always ahead of the game.