Financial institutions in Europe face the challenge of balancing urgent cloud transformation with strict regulatory compliance, and RISE with SAP, supported by T-Systems, offers a structured pathway to modernize ERP systems while ensuring security, flexibility, and adherence to industry regulations.
Modernization meets regulation
Cloud transformation is essential for financial services, but it must balance innovation with compliance. RISE with SAP provides a structured path to modernize ERP systems securely, flexibly, and in line with regulatory needs. With T-Systems as a Premium Supplier, that journey becomes smarter, sovereign, and sector-ready.
The power of balance
Cloud adoption in Europe’s financial services industry is at a pivotal stage. Across banking, insurance, and capital markets, digital transformation is becoming a top priority as institutions strive to be more agile, more data-driven, and more responsive to customer needs and regulatory changes.
Despite growing investment in digital capabilities, many financial services organizations are still only partially in the cloud. SAP observes that despite the growing value derived from computational services, many core business processes, especially the most critical, continue to run on-premises.
This gap illustrates the challenge financial firms face: they recognize the potential value of cloud, but also the complexity, regulatory scrutiny, and high bar for operational security. As a result, their transformation journeys tend to be cautious and incremental, rather than fast or linear.
That caution is understandable. Financial services are a highly regulated industry. From the European Central Bank (ECB) guidelines to the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the evolving environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, institutions face significant oversight. At the same time, they manage vast volumes of sensitive data that must be protected at all times, at rest, in motion, and during processing. These realities shape how financial organizations view cloud.
AI accelerates cloud momentum
Technological advancements require modern, high-performing infrastructure, whether on cloud or not, to enable real-time analytics, seamless integration, and scalable growth. Many organizations are layering intelligence over existing systems, including mainframes, to capture value without full cloud migration. At the same time, AI is evolving into a vital business asset, adding new dimensions to modernization strategies.
For financial institutions, mainframes still underpin many mission-critical workloads. Yet, the pressure is mounting: skill shortages, aging infrastructure, and the demands of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven workloads are intensifying the urgency to modernize.
Cloud platforms provide the flexibility and scalability needed to address these demands. However, most financial organizations are not moving everything at once. The hybrid cloud model has emerged as the preferred approach, enabling a balance between innovation and operational continuity.
With RISE with SAP, institutions can modernize step by step, preserving core systems while gaining access to cloud-based innovation, automation, and intelligent analytics. This shift is not just about staying relevant. It is about building the agility to respond to rising complexity, computational demands, and AI-driven change.
Modernization without compromise
Cloud transformation in the financial sector is urgent – but far from straightforward. As mentioned earlier, financial institutions operate in one of Europe’s most sensitive and highly regulated environments, where they must balance:
- Strict regulatory frameworks, such as ECB guidelines, Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin), European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA), DORA, and Network and Information Systems Directive 2 (NIS2)
- Highly sensitive personal and transactional data subject to GDPR and local data residency laws
- Legacy system complexity, with deep dependencies across front, middle, and back-office platforms
- Operational resilience, requiring transparency, traceability, and clearly defined controls
For many CIOs, this raises a fundamental question: How can we modernize our SAP systems and move to the cloud without compromising security, control, or compliance?
The answer lies in choosing the right approach. One that is flexible, regulation-aligned, and purpose-built for financial services. This brings us to the next question.
Can RISE with SAP offer a safe and smart way forward?
RISE with SAP offers a cloud transformation pathway towards SAP Business Suite, which simplifies this complexity. It brings together SAP Cloud ERP, infrastructure, core applications, and transformation services into a unified, subscription-based model, making modernization more manageable and less fragmented.
While RISE with SAP is ideal for enterprises seeking structure and efficiency, SAP also offers GROW with SAP for cloud-native or fast-scaling businesses. However, for regulated industries such as finance, RISE provides the framework for architectural governance, operational resilience, and auditability that compliance-driven organizations need.
Even so, the standard RISE approach may not fully cover the nuanced requirements of financial institutions. This is where the RISE tailored option, delivered by SAP Premium Suppliers such as T-Systems, makes a real difference.
With the tailored option:
- SAP remains your contract partner, ensuring consistency and commercial simplicity
- T-Systems delivers the infrastructure and the technical managed services, adding flexibility, customization, and industry-specific control
- You gain operational freedom while staying within SAP’s certified architecture
- This model is particularly valuable for financial institutions that require:
- Enhanced security and sovereignty
- Integration with core banking or insurance platforms
- Custom SLAs or compliance reporting
- Support for hybrid and legacy systems during phased transitions
T-Systems delivers this through its certified private cloud, hosted in Germany and specifically designed to comply with German and European Union (EU) regulations, as well as the requirements of the financial sector.
Getting your SAP roadmap right
For financial services firms, the pressure to modernize is clear, but so are the risks of getting it wrong. You’re not looking for buzzwords. You need solutions that align with your regulatory environment, operational priorities, and long-term strategy. Here’s what leading banks and insurers tell us they expect from their SAP journey, and how T-Systems helps deliver it.
A stable, transparent roadmap: You need certainty to plan. Shifting product names and unclear timelines don’t help. T-Systems helps you cut through the noise and stay aligned with SAP’s roadmap, giving you planning stability and clarity across the transformation lifecycle.
Financial services functionality that fits: From real-time payments to ESG reporting, compliance, and risk analytics, you know what your business needs. With T-Systems, you get access to SAP capabilities that are relevant to your industry. We help you deploy the SAP tools effectively, without overcomplicating your landscape.
AI that’s responsible and ready: AI adoption in finance needs more than performance; it requires explainability, compliance, and real-world relevance. From intelligent automation to anomaly detection, T-Systems supports AI that integrates into your operations and meets the standards your auditors would expect.
A composable, compliant data strategy built on sovereignty: You’re already sharing data with regulators, partners, and platforms. We help you design a composable architecture that enables secure data exchange, full visibility, and regulatory transparency. And because your data environment must also remain sovereign, we ensure it’s built to meet European legal and operational standards, keeping control, access, and compliance fully in your hands.
Why sovereignty is paramount
For European financial institutions, sovereignty is a critical requirement. They need full control over their data, applications, and infrastructure, keeping sensitive banking and insurance data within European legal boundaries. Regulators like ECB, BaFin, und EIOPA require systems that are auditable, traceable, and fully compliant with GDPR and local data rules.
Financial firms must always be able to answer these questions:
- Where is our data hosted?
- Who has access to it?
- Can we maintain business continuity independently?
- Can regulators audit and verify our IT systems?
T-Systems’ private cloud solution meets these needs by offering:
- Hosting within German legal jurisdiction
- Transparent audit trails and full encryption control
- RISE and SAP S/4HANA certifications
- Infrastructure aligned with ECB and BaFin requirements
Let’s move forward securely and strategically
We understand that sovereignty is not just a technical requirement; it’s a strategic safeguard.
Whether you’re just beginning your SAP journey or need to modernize across platforms, we guide the way with clarity, confidence, and cultural sensitivity. You don’t have to choose between innovation and compliance. With the right partner, you can have both. T-Systems makes RISE with SAP a secure, flexible, and future-ready option for financial services and insurance companies in Europe.
