Welcome

 ESG in financial services: Unlocking opportunities through thoughtful cloud strategies

Sponsored by Rackspace Technology
Thursday 2 May 2024
City Social, Tower 42, 25 Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1HQ

As financial institutions face increasing urgency to reduce their environmental footprint, cloud transformation presents a powerful opportunity – one that can inherently help shrink emissions through greater efficiency and consolidation. However, launching new green products and services to meet rapidly evolving ESG investing demands remains challenging due to legacy system constraints and complex compliance obligations.

In this FStech roundtable sponsored by Rackspace, financial services experts will explore how thoughtful cloud adoption aligns with sustainability goals, while sharing best practices for low-emissions cloud migrations, developing comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories tailored to financial IT environments, and responsibly decommissioning legacy infrastructure.

With ESG funding initiatives representing billions, even trillions in new revenue potential, the discussion will examine cloud's role in accelerating firms' ability to launch innovative green offerings despite technical debt. Attendees will gain insights into harmonising cloud strategies with environmental reporting requirements and securing executive buy-in.

This roundtable will equip financial leaders with insights to overcome obstacles and leverage cloud as an enabler of both environmental responsibility and new sustainable business models, and give attendees a roadmap for aligning processes, measuring impact with integrity, and avoiding greenwashing pitfalls – all while meeting compliance demands.

Topics for discussion:

• How are financial institutions weighing the potential environmental benefits of cloud against concerns around energy usage, e-waste, and other impacts from cloud providers?
  
  
• What are the biggest roadblocks preventing banks from retiring old, inefficient data centres and legacy systems in favour of cloud?
  
  
• What role can cloud play in helping financial firms develop and disclose credible, auditable emissions data and sustainability reporting?
  
  
• How can legacy financial institutions overcome cultural barriers and drive organisational change to fully leverage cloud for environmental initiatives?
  
  
• What criteria and evaluation frameworks should financial institutions use to assess migration strategies through an environmental and sustainability lens?
  
  
• What collaboration is needed between financial institutions, cloud providers, and regulators to drive sustainable cloud adoption?

Timings for the evening:
18:00 – 18:30       Welcome and refreshments
18:30 – 20:00       Introduction to fellow guests and roundtable discussion
20:00 onwards    Complimentary three-course dinner

Brought to you by FStech