AWS Holds Press Conference to Announce Cloud Research
Cloud Adoption Driven Primarily by Disaster Recovery
"Cloud Usage Increasing for Generative AI Development"
Client K Bank "Leveraging Cloud from App Innovation to AI"
It has been found that most financial institutions in South Korea have adopted public cloud services, primarily for reasons such as disaster recovery. More than half of these institutions have chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS), citing expertise and security as the main reasons.
On July 16, Noh Kyunghoon, Head of AWS Financial Services Division, announced these findings at the 'AWS Global Financial Business Strategy and IDC Korea Financial Sector Cloud Adoption Status Research Press Conference' held in Gangnam, Seoul. According to the joint study conducted by AWS and the market research firm IDC, titled '2025 Korea Financial Sector Cloud Usage Status Study,' 92% of all financial institutions in Korea have adopted public cloud services, regardless of their level of utilization. Public cloud refers to a model where users pay for the use of IT infrastructure resources provided by specialized vendors, without the need for separate construction costs. The two companies conducted an online and telephone-based quantitative survey from February to April of this year, targeting 150 financial institutions, including banks.
By sector, banks recorded the lowest adoption rate at 80%. Among banks, 10% are neither currently using public cloud services nor have plans to adopt them, while another 10% plan to adopt public cloud within the next three years. In the card and cryptocurrency sectors, all companies have adopted public cloud services, followed by insurance (97%), securities (97%), and fintech (finance + technology, 95%).
Financial institutions identified disaster recovery as the most important aspect of their cloud strategies for the next three years. When asked about the priorities of cloud strategies in the Korean financial sector, 42% of respondents cited 'disaster recovery and business continuity assurance' as the top priority. This was followed by 'improving productivity through IT operations automation' (35%) and 'accelerating the launch of financial services and enhancing market responsiveness' (34%). Additionally, 64% of financial institutions that are currently using or planning to use cloud services stated that they intend to increase their public cloud budgets. The most common reason given was to shorten the product and service launch and development cycle (61%).
More than half (53%) of financial institutions using public cloud services are utilizing AWS. The most frequently cited reason for selecting AWS was industry expertise and references (45%), followed by integrated capabilities (44%), and security and regulatory compliance (42%). Furthermore, 64% of financial institutions in South Korea are utilizing public cloud services for both application development and operational stages, and about two-thirds of financial institutions responded that they plan to further leverage the cloud to utilize generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Meanwhile, K Bank, an internet bank and one of AWS's clients, announced its data platform and generative AI strategy at the event. Cha Daesan, CIO of K Bank, stated, "We are innovating app banking to flexibly respond to surges in traffic, system failures, and service expansion, based on various clouds (multi-cloud)." K Bank plans to implement a cloud-based generative AI expansion strategy based on this foundation. The company is developing its own generative AI and plans to utilize a cloud-based AI model that supports multimodal learning (a method that integrates and processes different types of data such as audio, images, and text) through its innovative financial services.
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