Google Cloud Consulting commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by investing in Google Cloud Consulting.¹ This abstract will focus on the financial services industry’s experience with Google Cloud Consulting and its value to their organizations. The interviewees for this spotlight include:

• A chief information officer for a financial services organization that is based in the US and has $6 billion in annual revenue.

• A head of analytics for a financial services organization that is based in the UK and has $33 billion in annual revenue.

The financial services industry is in the midst of a sweeping transformation driven by the urgent need to modernize legacy infrastructure, meet evolving regulatory demands, and deliver faster, more resilient digital services. Institutions are migrating to the cloud at scale, rearchitecting their platforms, and shifting toward engineering-led cultures that prioritize agility, automation, and innovation. In a sector where real-time performance is critical and regulatory scrutiny is intense, these organizations require not just technology but trusted expertise to guide them through the complexity of modernization.

To navigate this journey, the interviewees’ financial institutions turned to Google Cloud Consulting as a strategic partner. They noted that Google Cloud Consulting brought deep product and cloud-native expertise, enabling faster, more secure migrations while embedding best practices for compliance, data governance, and cost optimization. Beyond technical execution, Google Cloud Consulting helped these interviewees’ organizations reduce their reliance on legacy systems, streamline operations, and build internal capabilities through hands-on training and embedded engineering support. Most importantly, Google Cloud Consulting was seen not as a vendor but as a partner deeply invested in their long-term success, accelerating transformation while mitigating risk in one of the world’s most demanding industries.

Investment Drivers For Financial Services Companies

The interviewees’ organizations invested in Google Cloud Consulting to help them digitally transform. These organizations struggled with several challenges in their legacy environments, including:

• Disparate and siloed data that required consolidation to provide business insights. Interviewees grappled with disparate data stored in isolated systems. This fragmentation critically hindered comprehensive analysis and the generation of accurate business intelligence, thereby negatively impacting strategic decision-making. The head of analytics at a financial services organization commented: “As a bank, we have quite a significant volume of data that we hold within the bank. We have two types of risk: currency risk and our data being regulated. Due to these risks, we needed a way to upgrade our existing infrastructure and as well as some of our out-of-date software.”

• Need for a cloud partner with deep expertise to help with cloud migration. Many of the interviewees, particularly those undergoing broad digital transformations, needed an experienced partner to navigate the complexities of cloud migration and innovation. The chief information officer of a finance company said: “We have a very strategic partnership with Google Cloud. The objectives of this partnership are to transform capital markets and to take it to the next level to the digital world.” The chief information officer went on to share: “We have some unique processing patterns. We have markets that move significantly during periods of high volatility. Such instances result in intensive workloads on a cloud platform and throughput. So, working with partners to get the best out of Google Cloud is a huge benefit. If we use a general-purpose partner, they are familiar with cloud technologies, but they’re not necessarily intimately familiar with Google’s offering.”

• Regulatory risks and compliance breaches resulting in fines. The interviewees said their financial services organizations operate in highly regulated industries and geographies, leaving them vulnerable to costly compliance breaches. The head of analytics at a finance company noted, “The biggest challenge we faced was a regulatory cost which could only be defined in regulatory censure or fines if something happened to the regulated data that we hold as a bank.” The head of analytics went on to say: “In the UK, in the financial services industry, we have a senior manager framework where there is individual accountability. If you are the senior manager who is responsible for data that is regulated, you are personally liable and accountable. Then there’s the banking license that one has to think about as well. So, the consequences are quite severe if it’s proven that due to negligence, data was lost at the bank.”

• Existing infrastructure update requirements. Interviewees focused on digital transformation and cloud migration to modernize aging infrastructure, including retiring costly and inefficient on-premises servers. The head of analytics at a finance company said: “I had to figure out whether my [previous box storage] was obsolete and if I needed to upgrade the infrastructure. I knew that when I went to cloud, I wouldn’t need to think about that anymore. I could just pay for compute and Google does the rest.”

• Stalled projects due to technological limitations. The absence of robust data architecture, modern cloud infrastructure, or adequate internal cloud expertise prevented interviewees from pursuing strategic projects, especially those involving emerging technologies like AI. “A lot of our AI-related projects were being held back because of a lack of consolidated data available in a central location where it could be consumed by our models,” commented the head of analytics at a finance company.

Google Cloud Consulting Features

The interviewees searched for a professional services organization that could:

• Be a cloud partner to enable digital transformation and modernize cloud infrastructure.

• Provide access to expert engineers who could offer guidance on optimizing the latest technologies to drive innovation.

• Help consolidate, manage, access, and secure data as well as add advanced analytics capabilities.

• Manage regulatory and security risks.

• Accelerate project execution, increasing speed to market.

• Build internal capabilities and skills in cloud technologies and advanced analytics.

Key Results For Financial Services

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include:

Continued business value generated by technologists. Following comprehensive due diligence and a strategic decision to adopt the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), interviewees were presented with three options for advancing their cloud innovation initiatives: leveraging their internal technologists, engaging a systems integrator, or utilizing Google Cloud Consulting. The interviewees opted for Google Cloud Consulting, thereby enabling their internal team of technologists to maintain focus on generating business value. Interviewees also noted that their projects would have taken two to three times longer without the help of Google Cloud Consulting.

The chief information officer at a finance company commented: “It would have taken twice, if not three times longer if we didn’t use Google Cloud Consulting. We’ve managed to dedicate a percentage of our team, along with Google Cloud Consulting, to the project. Delivering outstanding results manifests itself in the speed with which things get done. That includes managing risk, building regional resilient systems and taking advantage of the scale that cloud provides. We’ve managed to do that in a timeframe that is one-third of what it would take doing it in-house.”

Cost savings from decommissioning on-prem infrastructure. The interviewees worked with Google Cloud Consulting to digitally transform their businesses and migrate to the cloud. This effort included decommissioning many on-premises servers from data centers as the workloads shifted to the cloud. By not having to replace servers, they reduced the cost of the physical servers, server maintenance effort, and other data-center-related expenses.

The head of analytics at a finance company shared: “Overall, it becomes cheaper to be on the cloud because I don’t have to pay people to manage servers. Also, I don’t need to figure out how to spin up a project as it’s just done for me on the cloud. All I have to do is to make sure that my applications are upgraded accordingly.”

Increase in operating profit due to technology upgrade. The interviewees saw an increase in top-line revenue due to improved technology, which included better customer experiences due to AI, automation, personalization, and advanced capabilities.  

The head of analytics at a finance company noted: “Adopting newer technologies like AI or the cost of our services going down due to digital transformation generates referrals as we build new processes. Things turn around faster for our insurance products, which leads to a bigger market share for us. We are also seeing that we are now being viewed by our customers as innovative, which wasn’t previously possible when we were using on-premises types of capabilities.”

Fines avoided due to compliance. Interviewees reported reducing compliance breach fines, which were generally the result of data deletions or other data issues. Furthermore, interviewees shared that they were in a better position to assure regulators they had followed proper protocol due to their work with Google Cloud Consulting.  

• The head of analytics at a finance company said: “We had an incident where we potentially would have had to go and declare to the regulator about some potential data deletion but because of Google Cloud Consulting, we managed to save the data before the deletion happened. Had we not, the result could have been dire, but Google Cloud Consulting managed to help save us.”

• The head of analytics also shared: “You can never fully eliminate the chance that a compliance breach will happen. However, we now have the confidence to sit in front of a regulator and say that we have taken all steps possible within the senior management framework and that not by any negligence have we willingly caused data to disappear from our company.”

Efficiency gains in data operations. Interviewees gained efficiencies in data operations due to their work with Google Cloud Consulting, and data being consolidated in the cloud versus being siloed on on-premises servers provided improved access control and faster data processing.  

The head of analytics at a finance company said: “One of the things we have been able to consolidate is what we call our ‘golden path’ development for data workloads, meaning we have been able to standardize workloads and patterns for our teams. With standardized patterns, our teams can simply reuse off the shelf designs that have already been approved for the bank. This makes our life easier because it is much easier to do on the cloud.”