11 Oct, 2020 | Blogs
The use of technologies in the banking and financial services has given birth to the new fintech industry. As the fintech industry introduces latest digital technologies, it is easy to confuse robotic process automation (RPA) with other automation solutions. It also creates confusion related to the best systems and solutions as per the organization’s needs. So, how is RPA different from other digital solutions? What are the benefits of RPA? What about RPA implementation in the finance industry? These are some of the questions we’ll try to answer in this article.
Difference between RPA and Other Automation Solutions
The biggest difference between IT solutions and RPA, which is also its advantage, is that RPA does not need a new infrastructure to work. RPA is a computer-coded bot that uses the existing infrastructure, solutions, interface, and other digital systems to efficiently complete repetitive, labor-intensive tasks. Since it does not need added infrastructure, it is relatively cost-effective and easy to implement. Other differences between RPA and IT technologies are:
- Fast benefit realization
- Minimal upfront investments
- No disruption to underlying systems
- Led by the business, with support from IT
- Highly scalable and adaptable to changing business environment
Some of the benefits of RPA include:
- Allows human workers to focus on important functions that require intelligence and decision making.
- Saves time and costs by improving customer experience and ensuring compliance with regulatory bodies.
- Increases productivity and efficiency as robots can do more in less time.
- Reduces errors since bots only do what you program them to do.
In banking and financial services, RPA can be used in the following process:
1. Background verification
Background verification is a critical function of banking and insurance companies and requires data collection from multiple sources and formats. Customers need to meet compliance requirements like KYC (Know Your Customer) and CDD (Customer Due Diligence) processes. This laborious process requires significant man-hours, and by introducing software bots to do it, it can let the human workforce to focus on more strategic work.
2. Fraud detection
RPA implementation in finance and banking industries alongside technologies such as Natural Language Processing, can boost operational efficiency by verifying and approving invoices in minutes. Usually, finance businesses spend a large sum of money on these processes. Therefore, using RPA not only saves costs but also enables extraction of data from several sources, allowing fraud detection systems to be more effective and accurate.
3. Internal business processes
There are also multiple internal processes in the finance and accounting departments that can use RPA for all the numerous benefits mentioned before. These processes, which include report generation, audits, account closing, card blocks, etc., involve a lot of repetitive work, making it a great candidate for RPA. RPA bots can perform these tasks with speed and superior accuracy, thereby boosting the efficiency of the entire departments.
RPA Implementation In Finance
Although the process to implement RPA involves several steps, here are the key steps of RPA implementation in finance
Select the Right Vendor and Technologies
Once you know what to automate, you need to find the right RPA vendor who can do a proof of concept for you and show you how the bot will work in a controlled business environment of your company. It is a critical step, and selecting the wrong RPA partner can be disastrous for your process. The partner you choose should be able to understand your business requirements, suggest changes, and re-engineer the process (wherever applicable) and suggest the right technology while communicating with your teams along the entire process.
Therefore, choose a service provider that can work closely with your project managers and IT team to deploy the best suited RPA solution.
Create a Roadmap
A well-planned RPA implementation needs to have a clear roadmap, which should include all timelines. RPA roadmap should include five key stages: plan, pilot, implement, scale, and steady-state. These stages are built upon the previous one to help companies be better prepared for the future and stay competitive.
Choose the Right People
Even though RPA doesn’t need the full involvement of IT teams, it is critical to identify the right teams to be part of this project. For RPA implementation in finance, you not only need your IT team but also members from your F&A departments. Stakeholders from the finance teams should be able to explain the problem so that your RPA service provider can create a bespoke solution and also suggest any enhancements in the existing process.
Watch our on-demand webinar to understand in detail how you can implement RPA in your finance and accounting functions or get in touch with our automation experts.