How banks can leverage RPA
With high transaction volumes and repetitive activities, the banking sector becomes an ideal ground to implement RPA and intelligent automation extensively.
For instance, Accounts Payable processes can be automated with intelligent automation and Optical Character Reading (OCR) technology to read invoices, and validate data and credit amounts automatically. RPA software can be used for credit card processing to validate documents, customer credit history and applications to check eligibility. It can also be used to give the green signal to issue cards. Loan processing can be speeded up with intelligent automation which can validate loan documents, perform credit checks, verify employment status, check rules and regulations and disburse loans.
Banks need to adhere to several regulatory and compliance requirements for various purposes right from validating customers to reporting. Banks can employ RPA for Know Your Customer (KYC) validations, saving precious employee time and effort. By deploying RPA, customer information can be collected, screened and validated accurately and at lightning speed. Gathering data for internal and external reporting, onboarding customers, and account closures can be automated using RPA.
Intelligent bots can act as watchdogs by automatically detecting any potentially fraudulent transactions. Suspicious activity can automatically block account access, reducing any potential liabilities for the bank.
Cognitive Automation will lead the way forward
A scramble to simply automate routine transactions may not result in effective transformation. Launching several bots will eventually result in scaling problems and redundant processes. Instead, banks need to arrive at a cognitive automation strategy that will increase productivity and efficiency, and enable new value-added products and services to grow the business.
Banks need to have both a short and long-term vision for automation, with clearly defined objectives. Identifying the processes that need to be automated, and checking to see which processes need to be outsourced to vendors will help streamline functioning and keep the organisation agile. With the growth of AI, ML, natural language and cloud technology, several cutting-edge solutions are possible. Often these solutions may require relooking at workflows and processes for optimum efficiency. Large-scale cognitive automation can bring in process efficiencies, while at the same time requiring redefining workforce management. Human Resources (HR) needs to proactively identify the relocation, redeployment and retraining of employees. Needless to say, a robust IT infrastructure and platform* are necessary to enable complete automation, and a trusted IT partner to maintain the systems from the word go.