Diversify, scale, accelerate: The new approach for resilient financial institutions

In the first half of 2025, financial markets were shaken by geopolitical tensions, trade war fears and disruptions in energy markets. A high-pressure environment puts risk management and resilience to the test.

In June, over 150 experts from more than 35 EMEA institutions joined Murex in Paris for two days of knowledge-sharing, collaboration and forward-thinking perspectives at the Capital Markets Technology Forum. A group discussion on the resilience of financial institutions in volatile markets was especially engaging and timely. Firms that diversify, scale and accelerate can reinforce operational resilience, risk and business agility to respond effectively to rapid shifts in market conditions.

Financial institutions diversify cloud strategies to build operational resilience

Growing concerns about European bank overreliance on a single U.S.-based cloud provider – especially amid geopolitical tensions over trade and tariffs – are driving a push for diversification across cloud strategies. This shift is reinforced by the Digital Operational Resilience Act regulation and the European Banking Authority which issued guidance recommending multi-cloud adoption and geographic diversification.

Together, these factors are prompting institutions to rethink and actively redesign cloud strategies.

This trend is reflected in a London Stock Exchange Group survey, in which 82 percent of respondents reported adopting a multi-cloud strategy across their various IT systems.

Many institutions in attendance reported enhanced system availability, reduced latency and improved backup reliability after implementing multi-zone cloud hosting. The objective is clear: Preserve cloud agility without compromising resilience.

To support these emerging cloud strategies, financial institutions need flexibility from capital markets technology providers. Murex’s multi-cloud approach enables clients to run MX.3 on Azure, AWS or private cloud infrastructure, with continuous technology watch for cloud provider alternatives. Optionality allows clients to diversify and align their technology stack with resilience and regulatory requirements.

Financial institutions scale their infrastructure to support rising computational workloads

A few years ago, market risk managers primarily relied on overnight VAR figures. Today, with increased market volatility, they require real-time risk metrics, available before trade execution and supported by comprehensive scenario impact analysis. The ability to simulate multiple extreme market scenarios intraday and assess their effects on book performance and hedging strategy allows for more timely and appropriate decision-making.

Participants agreed that stress testing has evolved. Institutions now need to run more scenarios, faster. The challenge lies in the computational power required for full intraday computations under complex stress conditions, which can strain system performance and disrupt daily operations.

Scalability and elasticity are emerging as key modern risk platform attributes.

Vendors serving this space must offer solutions that are:

• Cloud-ready and elastic to handle peak volumes through auto-scaling without compromising performance
• Hybrid-capable, allowing institutions to offload CPU-intensive computations to the cloud and maintaining core operations on-premises

One commodity trading firm, for example, chose Murex to support these goals: “We made a key design decision to adopt Murex to build better resilience. The markets are volatile, and our systems must handle volume peaks without breaking.”

Financial institutions accelerate workflows to respond faster to market shifts

Whether to hedge exposures, adjust pricing models or meet client demands, institutions must respond quickly amid volatility.

“The gap between major events is shrinking, and market moves are more exaggerated,” said the head of trading at a European banking group. “Live risk monitoring is essential to quickly switch products based on market appetite.”

Real-time volatility tracking and live risk monitoring enable institutions to instantly detect and respond to emerging exposures and opportunities. This shift is transforming intraday risk management, with traders and risk managers now relying on granular, trader-driven, near-real-time views to monitor how risk accumulates and evolves.

This is where tools for real-time portfolio management stand out. These dashboards are designed to equip traders with interactive, real-time trading and risk management data. Users monitor the impact of market data changes on portfolio pricing, credit and market risk analytics and can respond swiftly and accurately, even in periods of extreme market stress.

Volatility ripples across equities, rates, FX and commodities. During periods of high volatility an integrated, front-to-back-to-risk, cross-asset capital markets platform becomes especially valuable. The seamless data flow across functions enables institutions to respond faster and more accurately.

“During stressed liquidity, immediate funding and accurate reporting are essential,” added the head of risk at EMEA banking institution. “If market data differs across systems, it creates discrepancies. Converging our risk systems into Murex has made things easier.”

The onboarding of new instruments and payoffs must accelerate

“Time-to-market is increasingly crucial, especially for FX and commodities.,” said the head of trading at a European banking group. “For some payoffs, model validation takes longer than expected, and Murex plays a key role in managing that.”

However, building a new product in the front office is only one part of the process.

From pricing and booking to risk and reporting, the speed at which a product can be launched depends heavily on how well it is integrated across the organisation. Institutions with a broader ready-to-use instrument catalog and standard front-to-back workflows are better positioned to move quickly. Attendees emphasised the growing importance of introducing custom products and integrating internal pricing models using low-code solutions to reduce development cycles.

This level of agility becomes possible when your technology is up to date. Institutions that treat platform upgrades as a regular activity are better equipped to proactively accelerate product onboarding and take advantage of the latest business and performance features.

Resilience has no finish line; it’s a moving target

The Murex Capital Markets Technology Forum participants made it clear: Staying ready means adopting a diversified cloud strategy to preserve agility, scaling infrastructure to manage rising risk and accelerating workflows to respond swiftly to market shifts.

Achieving this level of readiness highlights the value of partnering with a capital markets technology provider that remains closely aligned with clients, market dynamics, and regulatory changes. A partner like Murex can strengthen long-term operational resilience through rich and integrated workflows, scalable risk solution, and a unified, golden source of truth for business data and analytics.

Meet the Murex team at RiskMinds International this November!