Video | Why Spend Transparency Is Urgent Now

with Rakhinder Sembhi

Cloud adoption in financial services continues to accelerate — and with it, so do the costs. Yet many organizations are still playing catch-up when it comes to managing that spend effectively.

In this video, Protiviti’s Rakhinder Sembhi explores why cloud cost transparency has moved from a budgeting concern to a strategic imperative — and why mature organizations are shifting their approach to drive smarter governance, better design and meaningful savings across the enterprise.

Cloud Spend: The Invisible Curve

With cloud usage on the rise, many CIOs are seeing cloud bills grow exponentially — often without proportional increases in oversight or controls. This isn’t a technology failure; it’s a visibility challenge.

As development teams increasingly build in the cloud, spend can scale rapidly and unevenly. Without a clear strategy for monitoring and governing usage, costs become unpredictable — and harder to defend to stakeholders.

But the answer isn't to let cost drive strategy. It's to embed financial discipline into how cloud resources are designed, deployed and optimized.

Enter FinOps: Governance at the Intersection of Tech, Finance and Procurement

The buzz around FinOps — financial operations for the cloud — is growing for a reason. It's not just a practice or a toolset. It’s a mindset shift — one that demands cross-functional collaboration between technology, finance and procurement teams.

Done right, FinOps gives organizations:

• A clearer understanding of who’s using cloud resources, for what and why
• Insight into real-time cost drivers, not just retroactive billing data
• The ability to embed cost governance into cloud-native design
• An operating model that flexes based on cloud maturity level.

Critically, FinOps isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. Organizations earlier in their cloud journey may need light-touch governance. More mature adopters likely need dedicated roles, automation and processes built to scale.

The Last-Mile Problem: Shifting Behaviors at Scale

Identifying savings opportunities is only half the battle. The bigger challenge? Driving consistent, cost-conscious behavior across dozens — sometimes hundreds — of dev teams.

This last-mile issue is often where transformation efforts stall. Organizations must not only uncover waste but also implement processes and incentives that encourage different decisions at the team level.

Practical steps include:

• Turning off idle environments
• Rightsizing infrastructure for workload efficiency
• Choosing platform-as-a-service and cloud-native services that offer better cost performance
• Designing for cost from the outset, not after the invoice arrives.

Protiviti helps organizations build these capabilities into their cloud strategy — creating a sustainable, transparent model that scales with innovation, not against it.

Key Takeaway: Cloud Cost Governance Must Be Proactive

Cloud cost isn’t just a finance concern — it’s a tech-leadership issue. CIOs who succeed are those who embed spend awareness into architecture, culture and governance from day one.

Protiviti’s cloud cost transparency and FinOps services help financial institutions operationalize visibility, instill accountability and design with value — not just performance — in mind.

The Modern CIO Dilemma

In this exclusive series from Protiviti, explore quick-hit insights and executive perspectives on the evolving role of the CIO in financial services. The Modern CIO Dilemma distills key conversations into video briefings and podcast episodes. You’ll hear directly from finance transformation leaders on how CIOs are tackling today’s most pressing issues — from regulatory uncertainty to payment modernization. Whether you're rethinking your data architecture, implementing AI responsibly or preparing for the next compliance shift, this series brings clarity to complexity — fast.

Watch the series