Banking and financial business processes are associated with an excess of repetitive tasks, which makes them ideal for the automation on banking technologies. And while part of this digital transition has included the development of sophisticated automation solutions for investment and fraud detection systems, some of the most significant advantages have come from automating the smaller, more routine tasks performed more widely in these institutions. The move to automation has also enabled banks to expand their current product and service offerings through data.
The definition of automation on banking
Bank automation is any task that was once performed by a personal teller and is now fully automated. At a basic level, banking automation looks like an automatic coin counter that counts large amounts of coins quickly and accurately without human intervention. Such a solution allows the cashier to focus on faster and more critical tasks and provides the client with a smooth and pleasant experience with the deposit.
At its most complex, bank automation includes a wide range of artificial intelligence and cognitive computing technologies to automate most tasks in a bank branch. Some Bank of America branches have become fully automated, and one banker is available on the FaceTime platform to answer urgent questions. These examples demonstrate several of the features of automation, and its power to change how a bank does business is limitless.
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Traditional banks have structures and workflows designed to optimize the efficiency of the analog system that is not readily amenable to digital change. These structures create challenges, but the bank automation process offers a unique opportunity to rethink and restructure internal operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and optimize systems to work with future technologies.
In addition, banks face a unique challenge as one internal process affects multiple lines of business. Implementing automation solutions when an approach integrates different business systems, departments and tools is critical. Thus, you can be sure you are optimizing and not segmenting processes through automation.
Another essential issue to consider is customer satisfaction. While automation improves banking efficiency and provides on-demand answers and timely mobile assistance, many customers will oppose the change. As teams re-engineer the banking process, they must have clear goals and opportunities to capture and implement customer feedback to minimize disruption.
Banks may also note that as they automate more processes, employee satisfaction may decline due to their perception of the safety of their jobs. Banks should clarify to their employees that automation does not mean hiring cuts. Instead, automation takes over the simple, repetitive tasks that employees find most mundane and allows them to spend all their time on complex, high-profile cases.
Banking functions that may be delegated to automation
Intelligent automation quickly extracts relevant data from structured and unstructured loan documents from customer registration. It then automates the entry of that data into loan processing and opening account systems, thereby speeding up the commercial lending lifecycle. Other tasks that AI successfully cope with:
Banking management and compliance: intelligent automation increases operational efficiency with an endless list of regulatory and compliance requirements.
Anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions screening: intelligent automation in banking can be used to extract names and job titles to feed them into screening systems to detect false positives.
Letter of credit and guarantees: automate settlement changes, notifications, and data retrieval from letter of credit applications.
Incoming/outgoing payments: automate repetitive payment processing tasks to expedite transfers and extract details from funds transfer forms to automate outgoing funds transfers, vendor payments, and payroll processing.
Settlement and cash operations: many manual processes are involved in reconciling invoices and purchase orders. Some banks may deal with large volumes of accounts. Intelligent automation can be used to identify different account structures to obtain the necessary data to initiate the next steps in the process and enter the data into the bank’s accounting systems.
Transaction verification automation: intelligent automation can automate the removal of the most common false positives and also leave an audit trail that can be used for regulatory compliance.
Import and export payments: data extraction from invoices, certificates, and invoices can be automated, and data entry into payment processing systems for importers to simplify payment transactions and reduce manual processes.
Automated payment transactions: consider automating incoming and outgoing payments so that human operators spend more time on strategic tasks.
According to Capgemini, the financial services area is expected to add about $512 billion to global revenues through the adoption of intelligent automation, and there is no question of ROI when deployed thoughtfully. The best variant to look at intelligent automation in the future is as a solution that can deliver improvements throughout the customer journey.
Main advantages of automation on banking
Most of the products and services offered by banking and financial institutions are related to automation or have already received it. Banking automation technologies have significantly reduced response times and added value to every working hour. Other benefits of the such process include:
Increased trust: customers want to do more in less time and benefit from dealing with their financial institutions. Faster front-end consumer apps such as online banking and AI-assisted budgeting tools serve these needs perfectly.
Increased accuracy: banking automation reduces human error, and the time it takes to complete these tasks keeps costs as low as possible. The result is better business results and lower operating costs.
Efficiency: automation on banking has become one of the most accessible and affordable ways to streamline internal processes such as document processing. These automation solutions simplify time-consuming tasks and integrate with downstream IT systems for maximum operational efficiency.
Better Investment: banks and the financial services industry can now support large databases with different structures, data models, and sources. As a result, they better identify investment opportunities, spot failed investments earlier, and match investments to specific clients much faster than ever before.
Service Flexibility: the banking sector was once focused solely on providing financial services. Many organizations have used their newfound capabilities to offer financial literacy, economic education, and financial wellness. These new banking processes often include budgeting apps that help people with savings, investment software, and retirement information.
Traditional programs often have several limitations that make it challenging to scale and adapt as the business grows. For example, professionals spent hours searching and scanning documents needed to identify market trends. As a result, the number of available working hours limited their growth. Several use cases have demonstrated how automation on banking and AI for documentation remove these barriers.
Banking automation in action
Banks ready to embrace intelligent automation, including artificial intelligence and robotic process automation, should look for areas that can benefit the most in increasing their digital transformation and workflow efficiency. We’ve talked about the problems of the banking industry and how to solve them — now it’s time to discuss how banking automation fits into this picture.
Marketing
Banks can leverage the vast amounts of data at their disposal by combining data science, banking automation, and marketing to apply an algorithmic approach to market intelligence. Marketing teams need to see what their audience is looking for and test campaigns based on that information; As noted earlier in the article, these campaigns allow marketing teams to collect additional data and refine their strategies accordingly. Data science helps banks analyze the returns of these test campaigns much faster, which shortens test cycles, allows them to segment their audience at a more granular level, and makes marketing campaigns more accurate in their targeting.
Experience working with clients
The key to an exceptional customer experience is prioritizing customer convenience whenever possible. Banks are finding ways to reduce customer numbers through automation, from speeding up the onboarding process for new customers to making it easier for customers to get answers to pressing questions without waiting for an answer. As a bonus, by removing the friction around core tasks, banks also focus on more vital things, e.g., providing personalized financial advice to help clients solve problems and reach their financial goals. Banks can also use automation to collect customer feedback through automated email campaigns. These campaigns allow banks to optimize customer experience based on direct feedback and give customers a voice in this vital process.
Fraud prevention and protection
Customers need a bank they can trust, which means using automation to prevent and protect against fraud. The easiest option to get started is to automate customer segmentation to create more robust profiles that give you an entire picture of who you work with and when. To that end, you can simplify the Know Your Customer process by implementing automated checkout services.
Banks use automation to prevent and protect against fraud by using payroll automation to reduce human touch points, automatically freezing compromised accounts, speeding up false positive investigations by automating manual tasks, and more.
There are several examples of how intelligent automation improves banking and can help banks remain competitive today and in the future while complying with all regulatory requirements. It all comes down to how well intelligent automation is implemented across the end-to-end customer and employee journey.
So what are the next steps for banks interested in using intelligent automation? First, it is critical to identify suitable use cases, such as repetitive and structured processes, and then prioritize them based on business goals.
It is more efficient to start small and learn from the results. Create your plan interactively, but carefully evaluate each project deployment. Make it a priority for your organization to be more efficient and eliminate silos between departments. Based on this, banks can develop a strategic plan for future success.
