Leading European financial institutions have established a new coalition to strengthen the public cloud ecosystem across Europe’s financial industry.

The primary aim of the European Cloud User Coalition (ECUC) is to develop a joint position on common challenges and solutions with cloud services providers.

Allied Irish Banks, BAWAG Group., Belfius Bank, Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Börse AG, EFG Bank AG, Erste Group Bank, Euroclear, ING Groep N.V., KBC Bank NV, Swedbank AB and UniCredit S.p.A are some of the financial institutions that have joined the coalition so far.

Private clouds have been used widely in the region, but according to the ECUC, public cloud solutions are becoming more and more important in Europe because of their flexibility and scalabilty.

The group aims to win new members and jointly agree on security standards and best practices for the use of cloud tech across European financial institutions.

“On that basis the high European regulatory and data protection standards will be better enforced with non-European cloud providers as well,” said the coalition. “As a result, financial institutions will in the long term be more independent in their technology selection, thus strengthening competition.”

The coalition will publish a paper outlining requirements for cloud services during 2021, which will consider all aspects of the basic European regulation and the data localisation provision, including General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements.

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