Trusted, quality data and resilient data infrastructure are the foundations of financial services innovation in the AI era. The future of banking will be defined by an institution's ability to transform data into a strategic asset while maintaining resilience, compliance and customer trust.
This is according to Shana Maré, Territory Manager at Hitachi Vantara, who says: “The future of banking will not be defined by who has access to AI, because AI is becoming widely available. It will be defined by who has the most trusted, resilient and accessible data. Banks that invest in strong data foundations, continuous availability and cyber resilience today will be best positioned to innovate, comply, compete and grow tomorrow."
Trends shaping banking infrastructure
Maré highlights a number of key trends in the local banking sector: “Banks are increasingly embedding AI into day-to-day operations rather than treating it as an isolated innovation project. The focus is shifting towards tangible business outcomes such as fraud detection, customer service, risk management, compliance and operational automation. Rather than asking whether AI will be adopted, banks are now focused on how quickly they can operationalise AI safely and effectively. This shift is placing a renewed emphasis on data quality, governance and accessibility because AI success ultimately depends on the quality of the underlying data,” she says.
In addition, real-time banking and instant payments are becoming the norm. “Customers now expect banking services to be available in real-time. This includes payments, onboarding, lending decisions and personalised digital experiences. Banks require access to accurate, real-time data to support these expectations,” she says.
As a result, the ability to process and analyse information in real-time has become a competitive differentiator, enabling faster decision-making and improved customer experiences.
Regulators and boards are placing greater emphasis on resilience, business continuity, cyber recovery and proof of recovery capabilities, which makes operational resilience a strategic imperative.
“Banking leaders are increasingly measured not just by preventing outages, but by how quickly they can recover from disruptions,” Maré says. “As a result, resilience has become a board-level business priority.”
At the same time, financial institutions must demonstrate stronger governance around data privacy, cyber security, operational resilience, AI governance and customer protection.
“Compliance is increasingly becoming a data-driven exercise, requiring organisations to maintain visibility, control and auditability across growing volumes of information,” Maré says.
Cloud adoption is another factor in financial services. “Most banks are not pursuing wholesale cloud migration. Instead, they are adopting hybrid architectures where workloads are placed based on cost, performance, risk, compliance and data sovereignty requirements. This allows organisations to balance innovation with governance while maintaining control over critical banking systems and sensitive data,” she says.
Data-driven banking
The future of banking will be defined by data, and resilience will be a critical capability, Maré says.
“Modern banks need platforms that can handle growing volumes of structured and unstructured data, and support AI and analytics at scale. Crucially, they must deliver near-zero downtime, recover rapidly from cyber incidents and operate consistently across on-premises and cloud environments. They must provide real-time access to business-critical information and meet increasingly demanding regulatory requirements,” Maré notes.
She highlights Hitachi Vantara’s strengths in these areas. “Hitachi Vantara has long been recognised as a trusted and highly resilient technology partner for core banking environments, delivering the stability and reliability that financial institutions demand. While this foundation remains critical, our focus today is on enabling the business transformation taking place across the South African banking sector,” Mare says.
With extensive global experience in supporting financial services organisations on their transformation journeys, Hitachi Vantara helps banks create the trusted data foundations needed for successful AI adoption.
The organisation’s approach focuses on three key areas: trusted and AI-ready data, mission-critical resilience and hybrid cloud and AI platforms.
Maré explains: “We help institutions break down data silos and provide access to clean, connected and governed data so AI initiatives can scale beyond pilot projects. By creating unified data foundations, organisations can improve governance, accelerate analytics and ensure AI systems have access to trusted information at scale. Data modernisation is increasingly becoming the foundation on which successful AI strategies are built.”
Supporting continuous availability, cyber recovery, data protection and business continuity, Hitachi Vantara solutions are designed to protect critical banking operations while meeting demanding recovery objectives.
Maré emphasises: “Hitachi Vantara is one of the few technology providers that backs its enterprise storage platforms with a 100% data availability guarantee, a commitment we have maintained for more than 20 years. This is enabled through enterprise-class engineering that eliminates single points of failure, incorporates end-to-end redundancy, proactive monitoring, advanced RAID protection and non-disruptive failover capabilities, ensuring mission-critical banking data remains continuously accessible.”
She adds: “Beyond availability, organisations must also be confident that they can recover rapidly from cyber incidents. Hitachi Vantara's Cyber Resilience Guarantee provides the additional assurance that clean production data can be recovered following a cyber attack. Combined with immutable snapshots, advanced ransomware protection technologies and recovery automation, organisations can recover verified clean recovery points rapidly, helping minimise operational disruption and strengthen cyber resilience. Together, these guarantees provide a powerful combination of continuous availability, rapid recovery and operational confidence that enables banks to protect customer trust while continuing to innovate.”
Through solutions such as VSP One and Hitachi iQ, Hitachi Vantara provides the data infrastructure foundation that enables organisations to modernise their environments, accelerate AI adoption and manage data seamlessly across on-premises and cloud platforms.
To read more about how to future-proof IT in financial services, you can download a free eBook here.
Share
