The finance and banking industry is constantly struggling to boost productivity and optimize costs, which calls for a better approach to enable systematic compliance in operations and management.
RPA automates the manual business procedures that allow banks to stay competitive in the market. For example, RPA technology will enable customers to automate payments, make withdrawals and deposits, and do other banking transactions without manual intervention.
Moreover, when robotic process automation works with AI, banks can replace many monotonous human operations. This is because the technology involves the use of structured and non-structured data. Plus, there is no need for new IT infra, and it offers better regulatory compliance.
In addition, both AI and Robotic Process Automation significantly make time-consuming banking operations and payment processing more organized.
- In fact, according to a report, the RPA market is expected to grow to 22 billion dollars by 2025. Moreover, it helps streamline many back-office tasks bogged down by the bank workers.
- The automation of loan processing using RPA can bring down the duration of the procedure by 10% to 15% approximately.
- By bringing the two technologies together in finance and banking, you can minimize the manual processing of big data to avoid errors.
- According to Deloitte, assets under management (AuM) for the wealth management industry in 2020 was around 2.2T which will rise to 16T by 2025.
- Moreover, with the help of bots, you can reduce the processing cost by up to 70%, and that’s huge.
Why should you bring Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligent to finance & banking?
The banking and finance sector has recorded expenditures in billions over the last decade to meet the penalties. Moreover, more than 10% of operational costs are attributed to compliance costs. With RPA automation, banks can reduce compliance issues, lowering penalties’ costs.
- Finance automation can take financial services to a new level by reducing manual labor and providing better compliance.
- Automation streamlines the entire banking chain – from loan processing to new customer onboarding. It also provides security coverage for the closure of customer accounts in the bank.
- Robotics in the banking and finance sector uses powerful robotic software that reduces expenditure and maximizes efficiency.
- You can implement end-user-level tools and replace manual labor with AI. However, as the future seems bright with the automation wave, you must invest in technology to stay updated with the trend.
Automation in Banking and Finance – Use Cases
Though automation has affected many business processes, financial tasks have remained manual. In addition, the banks’ lack of resources and uneasiness has been a setback and thus RPA came into the picture.
Moreover, the financial and banking sectors have many transactional processes that are mundane, repetitive, and time-sensitive. Also, the processes can be data sensitive. RPA use cases in finance have developed over the years. Let’s explore some of the applications here:
- Customer service
Banking sectors deal with multiple daily queries with account information to balance and application status. Following this, it becomes difficult for the banks to respond to questions individually with a low turnaround time.
Both technologies are adept at automating different rule-based processes, which helps reduce the turnaround time to seconds. Plus, it frees up human resources for more critical tasks.
Most banks are integrating AI and ML to enhance the function of RPA. By doing so, AI can expand business process automation in banks. The systems can communicate using human language and recognize different sentiments
Besides, it plays a significant role in customer service, as chatbots enable bots to understand the natural language of chatting and respond to customers like humans.
- Account payable
Account payable may be simple, but it is a tedious process in the banking system. The process requires extracting the vendor information and validating it. However, it does not require any intelligence, which makes it a perfect case of automation.
RPA process, with the help of OCR, will be able to solve this problem error-free. OCR can read the vendor information from the digital copy and process the payment. If any errors occur in the process, it notifies the execution for resolution. Therefore, there is no chance of mistakes in the account payable process, which make all the difference.
- Fraud detection
Fraudulent messages have become a norm, and you may get many notifications on your phones daily. Therefore, it gets tricky for banks and financial institutes to deal with fraud. Besides, with the introduction of digital systems, fraud has become a significant concern for banks. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult for banks to follow all the transactions to track fraud.
But with RPA, you can detect the fraud, and the system raises a flag if there is some significant fraud transaction. It also helps to evaluate the patterns in real-time, which helps delay the response. In addition, the technology can prevent fraud by blocking bank accounts.
- Credit card processing
When you apply for a credit card, it may take weeks to evaluate different customer information. But this is a traditional credit card processing practice. And at times, the long waiting period causes customer dissatisfaction, affecting the bank’s credibility. However, with automation, banks can process new credit card applications within hours.
RPA can connect with multiple systems and evaluate customer information like background checks and required documents. It also makes different credit checks and takes decisions based on the customers’ applications, which makes things easier for the customers applying for the card.
- Account closure process
Banks and financial institutes get account closure requests monthly, and handling a large base of requests becomes difficult. Plus, there can be various reasons for closures, and one of them is when the customer fails to provide relevant documents to the bank for verification. However, it makes tracking such accounts for closure easier.
They sent automated notifications and scheduled calls to the customers notifying them of the closure. RPA can also help banks close cases in exceptional scenarios where customers fail to provide relevant documents on time.
Some benefits of AI and Robotic Process Automation in banking and finance:
- Customer Service – Implementing automation in banking can help standardize some tedious processes of the banks. By automating manual tasks, banks can reduce the need for human involvement, which can directly impact efficiency levels to performance. Besides, as the bank and finance sector deals with voluminous customer data, it leaves a scope of errors.
- Business growth – Proper implementation can allow the banks to be more scalable, and banks will be able to focus more on innovative strategies to help grow their business. In short, it will free up the employees from doing mundane tasks.
- Time and cost factors – Automation allows banks to save around 30 to 50% of processing time and costs. In addition, it helps financial institutes and banks make the processes much faster, more efficient, and more productive than manual tasks.
- Reduce risk and productivity – The technologies help generate full edit trails for every process and reduce business risk to maintain high process compliance. RPA operations help makes banking and finance operations productive and helps extract information with accuracy. Since the system automates tasks, it lowers IT expenditures. Once implemented, it allows banks to work on inventive strategies.
Implementation of RPA in finance and accounts:
- Identify the process
- Prepare specific data
- Define your process
- Choose the process carefully
- Before deployment, start with testing
Take a leap ahead
Integration of AI and Robotic Process Automation integration has already started in banks and financial institutions. Both technologies serve point-based solutions that are quick and easier to implement for large-scale processes. Additionally, automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks can transform the banking sector.
Automating mundane tasks can enhance productivity and reduce the workload on bank employees. Plus, it reduces the error rates and provides an impressive turnaround time. However, partnering with proven expertise in RPA tools is vital throughout the implementation process.
By embracing RPA technology, banks can improve customer service while reducing costs and improving efficiency. Moreover, increased automation will make day-to-day jobs easier for bank employees.
To implement RPA in your organization, you must choose trusted RPA companies with expertise in developing custom RPA solutions for their clients. Implementation of RPA can get you the best results with problem framing, data alignment, and piloting new bots to help banks reach their goals. Besides, proper integration and automation will help in planning and execution. Lastly, define your strategies and work towards achieving them.