Do you want to know what RPA or process automation in banking is?
RPA or Robotic Process Automation when used in financial institutions or banks, fulfills the function of automating all those processes that are done manually, in order to streamline work and get companies to make their way towards business digitization, achieving position itself in this competitive market. The implementation of RPA in Banks and Financial Institutions manage to see a positive ROI in a few weeks from its activation
RPA in banking and finance favors the number of processes carried out by financial institutions and also the speed of response, in addition to the concrete results of the actions carried out with software robots.
Banking and finance companies have had to modify and update their procedures given the profound boom that has been experienced regarding cryptocurrencies, automated payments, customer services and obtaining instant information through technological platforms. Modernization has had to appear quickly in the face of business and commercial needs. All businesses are implementing new technologies to gain competitive advantage. RPA technology is a priority for the digital transformation of the world.
Digitizing data to computer systems is undoubtedly one of the repetitive tasks par excellence, where RPAs can make use of their powers to be able to read, copy, select and manage to form new documents, send emails and thus deliver both agile how accurate information to customer services, back office workflows and wherever it is needed.
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RPA and smart automation
RPA lays the foundation for process automation, and by taking it further, banks have already started to complement themselves with AI (intelligent automation). Smart automation uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve RPA, which has allowed banks to increase the automation of banking processes significantly. This is how intelligent automation works in the banking sector.
- Thanks to Process Automation, banks can manage complex, slow and repetitive processes.
- These processes typically involve the use of structured and unstructured data.
- Using RPA, you can perform tasks that were previously performed by humans, but now you can rely on a digital workforce to classify, recognize, and manage the information you need.
- Some work processes that previously required human intervention can now be fully automated.
RPA provides the essential elements necessary to automate processes. To further improve RPA, banks are beginning to implement Intelligent Automation (AI). Intelligent Automation improves RPA through Machine Learning and AI. In this way, the Smart Automation industry has massively expanded the Automation of business processes within banks. To summarize, this is how Smart Automation works in banking:
- RPA enables banks to automate complex processes from start to finish.
- These processes typically involve the use of structured and unstructured data.
- Gracias a la RPA y el aprendizaje de las máquinas (ML), los sistemas son capaces de comunicarse entre si utilizando lenguajes humanos, clasificando y reconociendo los patrones constantes en los procesos.
- This understanding of the language allows RPA to operate in a fully automated way, even being able to give way to the workflow that previously required human intervention.
Main benefits of robotics in banking
Banks that implement RPA can elevate their customer experience while improving service quality and lowering costs. It is not uncommon for a bank to start seeing a positive return on investment in just a few weeks.
Here are some examples of how banks benefit from RPA:
No new IT infrastructure needed
With traditional IT projects, new infrastructure is often needed before the project can begin. However, implementing RPA in banking requires almost no new infrastructure. Banks can leverage existing IT infrastructure to start reaping the benefits. A unique feature of RPA is that it can leverage the native user interfaces of existing legacy systems to perform its automated tasks, making it a low-intrusive solution that relies on existing infrastructure.
Save of time and money
Due to COVID-19, cost-saving initiatives are a significant focus for banks to be competitive and provide better services. How does implementing RPA save banks time and money? The implementation of RPA in various operations and departments makes it possible for banks to execute processes faster. Research indicates that banks can save up to 75% on specific operational processes while improving productivity and the quality of their services. While some RPA projects lead to downsizing, many banks see an opportunity to use RPA to help their existing employees be more effective than before.
Improve processes
The digitization of data has allowed banks to reduce paperwork. RPA can quickly scan relevant information and gain strategic analytics. Several RPA tools provide drag & drop technology to automate processes with little or no development. In addition, bots continue to work 24/7 to handle data entry, payroll, and other mundane tasks, freeing humans to focus on more strategic or creative work.
Augment human workers with a digital workforce
The “digital workforce” concept is emerging these days due to the advancement of digital technologies. Robots take care of data entry, payroll, and other data processing tasks, while humans parse reports to gather useful insights. In addition, workers can have their banking robots help them quickly collect information and process data so that humans can complete their work more efficiently.
Installation and updating of banking processes can take as little as a week. In addition, robots can be tested in short-cycle interactions, making it easy for banks to “test and learn” how humans and robots can work together.
Better regulatory compliance
Banks and other financial institutions must comply with many legal and financial regulations. According to a recent report, more than 70% of compliance officers believe that automation tools like RPA could significantly improve the use of compliance resources. RPA is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is highly accurate in driving the quality of compliance processes.
Through natural language processing (NLP), staff can use RPA tools to collect information and analyze various transactions against specific validation rules through natural language processing. If the RPA bots find a suspicious transaction, they can quickly flag it and contact their compliance officers to handle the case. This automated proactive surveillance can help prevent financial institutions from facing financial losses and legal problems.
Compliance
Banks have to deal with many regulations issued by central banks, the government, and other parties. It becomes a challenge for staff to comply with each of the laws. Implementing RPA can help faculty better comply with rules and regulations. RPA works 24 hours a day and quickly scans transactions to identify compliance gaps or other inconsistencies.
Debts to pay
Managing accounts payable is a time-consuming process. It requires staff to digitize supplier invoices and then validate the information in each field before processing it. Using Intelligent Automation, including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), you can automate these repetitive processes by automatically reading invoices and crediting payments after correcting errors and validating data.
Credit card processing
The processing of mortgages requires much work, both for the clients and the banks. Most US banks take 50-55 days to originate and complete a mortgage loan. Banks have to go through numerous steps like credit checks, employment verification, and inspection before approving the loan. Even a tiny mistake on the bank or the customer could drastically slow down the processing of a mortgage loan. However, RPA has speeded up the process for banks. It goes through established rules and eliminates potential bottlenecks, speeding up mortgage processing. For many banks, mortgage loan times can be reduced by up to 80%.
Mortgage processing
The processing of mortgages requires a lot of work, both for the clients and for the banks. Most US banks take 50-55 days to originate and complete a mortgage loan. Banks have to go through numerous steps like credit check, employment verification and inspection before approving the loan. Even a small mistake on the part of the bank or the customer could drastically slow down the processing of a mortgage loan.
However, RPA has speeded up the process for banks. It goes through established rules and eliminates potential bottlenecks, speeding up mortgage processing. For many banks, mortgage loan times can be reduced by up to 80%.
Fraud detection
The advancement of technology has caused an increase in fraud cases. It is now impossible for banks to thoroughly check each transaction manually and identify fraudulent patterns.
RPA uses algorithms to identify fraudulent transactions, flag them, and pass them on to the appropriate departments. Meanwhile, the suspicious account can be automatically put on hold to prevent any further illegal activity.
Know Your Customer Process
Banks are responsible for collecting information from their customers. RPA enables banks to collect, examine and validate customer information automatically. As a result, banks can complete this process faster and for less money while reducing the potential for human error.
Ledger
Banks deal with vast amounts of data every day, constantly collecting and updating essential information such as income, liabilities, and expenses. Banks use this information to prepare financial statements. The public media and other interested parties review the resulting financial reports to determine whether the relevant organizations are performing as expected. It is a challenge for banks to handle so much data and compile it into financial statements without any errors. With the help of RPA, banks can collect, update and validate large amounts of information from different systems faster and with less chance of mistakes.
Report automation
All actors in the banking sector need to prepare financial documents on different processes to present to the board of directors and shareholders. Banks need to explain their performance and challenges based on these reports. Financial institutions mustn't make mistakes in their financial statements. Banks host large volumes of data, and RPA can make data management a more straightforward process. Using RPA can help banks prepare reports with accurate data. You can collect information from various sources and organize it in an understandable format.
Account Closing Process
Each month, many clients send account closure requests to banks. Also, banks sometimes have to close customer accounts if they do not present proof of funds. With the help of RPA, banks can send automatic reminders if customers have not submitted the required evidence. RPA is also capable of queuing and processing account closure requests based on specific rules.
RPA Case Studies in Banking
Reduction of account opening
The existing manual account creation process was time-consuming, very manual, and frustrating for clients. For employees, repetitive "copy and paste" tasks limited productivity, leading to lower satisfaction and retention issues. In addition, the interaction with the multiple legacy systems of the bank generated high maintenance and integration costs.
Solution to automate account opening
Use RPA bots to extract application data across various document types, flag missing documents, and execute the know-your-customer process with greater accuracy and speed than the manual process. It is possible to create unified automation platforms that integrate with multiple legacy systems, collecting a single audit trail of the account opening process.
Bank employees will be able to focus on the most challenging situations.
With this solution, the bank can immediately open an account while the customer is online and interacting with the bank.
Automating the mortgage application process
A bank may have difficulty processing the thousands of mortgage applications it receives each day. This process has several steps to verify the application information, with supporting verification documents (credit history, permits, proof of payment, etc.) and many redundancies.
- The bank struggles with significant delays and slow execution times. RPA bots can develop solutions that allow documents to be digitized and extract relevant data from application documents and transfer it to internal systems.
- RPA can validate that all required documents have been submitted and detect a signature on the proxy document.
- Automation reduces delays improves turnaround times along with customer satisfaction.
- Financial institutions can review legal documentation related to new products available to share with their customers.
Data extraction is time-consuming:
This automated process can focus on reducing the time to extract data from lengthy documents, such as prospectuses. With RPA, it can be facilitated by:
- Categorization of incoming emails and documents; sorted and sent requests.
- RPA robots will extract critical data: read extensive legal documentation and essential information.
- Validation and quality control: work is orchestrated so that all data points are validated, and there is a clear link between each field and the source documentation.
- It is reducing commercial loan booking time and improving analyst capacity.
The bank's commercial loan recording teams strive to comply with statutory regulations. The loan registration and compliance verification process is extensive, repetitive, and highly manual, requiring analysts to enter many data fields into the system.
Despite rigorous coded quality controls, the process is slow and error-prone. With RPA and intelligent automation, the process is a candidate for improvement.
Real-time learning bots: Bots automatically extract key data fields from various unstructured loan documents.
Centralized governance: Automating each step also creates a continuous audit trail, allowing the bank and regulators to track how the bots interpret and act on the data.
With automation, bank analysts can shift their focus to higher-value activities, such as validating automated results and reviewing complex loans that are initially too complicated to automate. This transformation could increase processing accuracy, reduce handling time per loan, and provide the bank with greater capacity to service the customer.
With automation, it is possible:
- Improve the accuracy of data entry
- Reduce handling times per loan
One of the reasons RPA has become commonplace today in banks is the rapid pace of innovation brought to market by the various RPA software vendors. RPA software offers pre-built automation solutions that can be added to your workflows with minimal effort.
How to implement RPA in your bank
Implementing RPA in a bank can be challenging. It requires the help of technicians and professionals from different departments to work together to implement it. Here are the three steps to start implementing RPA in your bank:
Evaluation
The first task is to assess and shortlist the processes suitable for RPA implementation. Then a list should be made to analyze how they affect the organization and the potential benefits of automation.
Calculate whether it makes sense to automate
After the assessment, the next job is to calculate the cost and efficiency gains you can achieve by implementing RPA. Make a realistic expectation of the return on investment. Be sure to use various metrics such as resource utilization, time, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
Have a comprehensive execution strategy
You need to choose a suitable operating model based on your organization's requirements. You need to identify the right partner for RPA implementation, including planning, execution, and support.
Implement RPA for your bank
By adopting RPA, banks can improve the customer experience while reducing costs and improving efficiency. Increased automation, combined with more efficient processes, makes daily life easier for employees to spend less time on tedious manual work and more time on profitable projects.
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