Cloud cost leaks where nobody is the owner: preview environments, logs without retention, disks after a migration, an oversized cluster “just in case”.
Allocation and cadence
FinOps starts with allocation. If a team cannot see its bill, it will not optimise. Then the rhythm: weekly anomalies, monthly rightsizing, quarterly commitments.
Fintech and reliability
For fintech we add a layer: savings must not break the SLO or DORA controls. A cheap environment that will not survive an audit is the most expensive one. The scope is on the FinOps page.
In short: first you can see whose bill it is. Then you cut what nobody uses, without touching the limit the transaction depends on.