The ongoing global pandemic has forced a number of businesses to pivot away from existing operations and look for new, innovative ways to provide products and services to customers. The fall in global demand mid last year caused by COVID-19 has seen a slight but steady recovery. More businesses are acclimating to the “new normal” and are supplementing their organizations with the components they need to optimize business activities.
A common consideration at a time where more employees are encouraged to work from home, but operations must carry on, is the incorporation of Robotic Process Automation or RPA. A proven beneficial addition to any business environment, the technology has firmly found its way into the financial sector and has proven to be a valuable addition to the industry. RPA services are often implemented after thorough inspection and assessment by providers of Robotic Process Automation Consulting Services.
What is RPA
Robotic Process Automation is a gentle take-off point for businesses looking to augment existing processes and practices with rule-based automated processing. Businesses are able to take activities considered mundane or repetitive and substitute a human employee with a system built and designed to handle the cyclical nature of these tasks.
This minimizes the risk of human error, streamlines internal activities, offers an opportunity to reduce overall expenditure and offers a quicker yet more precise method of ensuring activities are completed. RPA technology also allows businesses to ensure the data captured is as accurate as possible, stored as needed and follow up actions are conducted without the need for human intervention.
RPA in Financial Services
In an industry as sensitive as financial management ensuring automation and security go hand in hand . RPA offers a growing number of benefits to the financial sector. As technology develops, the scope of use widens, and the ability to incorporate RPA with businesses of any size within the industry grows. Here are some of the ways RPA has benefitted the financial sector;
1. Compliance
With a growing number of integral financial sector employees moving to work from home, it can get difficult to communicate and ensure all activities are running as they should. A slight delay could cost the organization heavily in the long run. This situation comes to light more aggressively when compliance is questioned.
Over the last ten years, businesses within the financial sector have paid over USD $321 billion in fines based on a lack of compliance. 10% of overall operational expenses by any financial institution spawns from compliance costing. RPA allows the business to put measures in place to trigger appropriate response actions. For example, ensuring tax documents are sent like clockwork or ensuring applications are filled out in their entirety are activities RPA can take over.
2. Lower Investment in the Long Run
Especially with the current employment environment, introducing new members to the team can be costly at a time where income generation is not at its best. While the initial investment to introduce RPA can seem tedious, with the implementation and training costs, in the long run it can prove extremely beneficial to cut out unnecessary investment into labour.
Onboarding costs of an employee take into account incentives, facilities, annual pay increases, bonuses and promotions. If RPA is able to substitute this employee while needing no additional investment except, possibly adding more rules to streamline RPA understanding and processing, it is definitely a more effective option.
Additionally, it is important to consider the scope for human error that lies in time-consuming yet repetitive tasks. While this information may be integral to conducting internal activities and optimizing business strategies, incorrect data processing could cause an anomaly with stronger than anticipated repercussions.
3. Customer Onboarding
The process of on-boarding a customer within the financial sector can be time-consuming and paper work-intensive. With a growing number of financial institutions moving their operations to a digital sphere with the pandemic risk, now would be the perfect time to introduce RPA into customer onboarding. As the process requires verification of sorts, when the information is entered, RPA equipped with the ability to detect anomalies or undesired answers could help move application processing and approval or denial status to customers faster.
RPA is also able to capture data through optical character recognition abilities if equipped with them. This helps the system compare information provided/being assessed with the information provided by a customer through a form.
4. Stronger Security Measures
The financial sector is sensitive information-heavy. With a growing number of businesses migrating to a digital space, the threat of hacking or data misuse has never been higher. RPA measures are able to detect irregularities with haste. When issues are searched for manually, they can be missed. RPA systems ensure security threats are constantly searched for and attacked promptly when detected. Additionally, the automated system is able to send alerts to parties that should be aware of the ongoing activities, and remedial measures, both immediate and long term, are initiated.
Organizations with RPA intervention within security measures are more likely to see successful threat detection and destruction than businesses that conduct this manually.
5. Faster Assessments
Move through tedious processes like report generation and account opening seamlessly with the introduction of RPA. RPA is able to process large volumes of data quickly if programmed with the right set of rules. Businesses can use RPA to understand the constant influx of data within financial institutions to generate reports. These reports can be used to make better business decisions.
RPA can also be used to automate any process that may be lengthy but is standardized, like account opening or getting a loan approved. If the RPA system is designed to understand what irregularities look like and what circumstances under which to approve or disapprove, activities are done faster and customers processed at larger volumes while still maintaining optimization.
Conclusion
RPA or Robotic Process Automation can be an extremely lucrative investment for any business but can be extremely helpful within the financial sector. RPA offers an opportunity to move the lengthy yet standardized processes faster and without scope for human error. The pinpoint accuracy of this technology is helpful in an industry as sensitive as financial management. A single error could cost someone heavily in a literal sense.
Successful RPA implementation is based on training and finding the right processes to automate. Introducing a certified consultant would be strongly recommended.
Visit uk.sganalytics.com for more information on Data Analytics Services, Market Research Services & ESG Consulting
