RPA: The Solutions to the Financial Service’s Labor Shortage Crisis

Introduction 

It’s no surprise that banks, institutions, and money managers struggle to find and retain talent.

 

In its 2018 report, Korn Ferry predicted a worldwide talent crunch by 2030, with the effects of a labor shortage being felt as early as 2020.

 

The report mentioned that the financial services sector would be among the most brutal hit, and it could result in $435 billion in unrealized economic output for the industry.

 

As the pandemic drags on and social/technological changes continue, it’s unlikely things will go back to a pre-pandemic normal.

 

Entering a “new normal,” banks and investment firms need new ways of dealing with staffing shortages for years to come.

 

There are a variety of factors that have contributed to the current situation, including many members of an aging workforce deciding to retire early and a swath of workers reluctant to return to in-person work post-pandemic because they’ve grown accustomed to being away from the office. 

 

RPA may prove to be a useful solution to address a few of these challenges.

What is RPA, and What Does it Do?

RPA refers to a set of technologies, often involving artificial intelligence (AI), that allow computers to perform tasks and processes traditionally carried out by humans. 

 

RPA helps banks, insurance, operations, and finance departments automate repetitive manual processes, allowing the associates to focus on higher-value tasks and help the organization gain a competitive advantage. 

 

To further enhance RPA, financial institutions have implemented intelligent automation by adding AI/ML/NLP (Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning and Natural Language Processing) capabilities. 

 

The addition of intelligence enables the RPA software to handle complex processes, understand human language, recognize emotions, and adapt to real-time data.

 

RPA Use Cases in Financial Services

With RPA, companies in the Financial Services sector can streamline the following processes within their organization:

 

Customer Onboarding and KYC

 

An excellent first impression is critical to a good customer experience. For most customers in the Finacial Services industry, that first impression occurs during onboarding. Traditionally, new customer onboarding entails filling out and signing stacks of paper. 

It adds an administrative burden to onboarding teams, increases the risk of process bottlenecks and puts customers’ patience to the test.

Finacial Services companies make it simple for their customers by transforming traditional onboarding into an electronic process rather a manual, paper-based one. From there, companies can use financial process automation to speed up key parts of onboarding. 

For example, RPA bots can validate information across multiple systems. Data automatically enters into the customer management portal without any discrepancies. Implementing RPA helps customers open their accounts much faster, enhancing overall CX.

 

Account Closure Processing

 

Account closure is undoubtedly one of the most lengthy and time-consuming processes. The process starts with the identification of an account closure request. Other essential tasks include:

• • • Communication with customers
    • Checking their outstanding loans
    • Requesting documents
    • Canceling direct debits and standing orders
    • Transfer of funds

 

RPA is an effective tool to automate these activities. The key benefits of RPA in account closure are: reduced time it takes to process service requests as well as improved productivity and better data maintenance. 

RPA can send an alert to the bank manager and update bank records when the closure process is completed. It can also change the status of the account closure request.

Mortgage Lending

 

Mortgage lending is an important service area for any financial institution.

Being a process-driven area, it is an ideal candidate for RPA automation. RPA implementation and clearly defined rules can handle even the process exceptions. Moreover, the technology can be used with the bank’s existing loan originating systems, thereby driving improvement without infrastructure disruption.

RPA can automate tedious and time-consuming tasks like loan origination, document processing, quality assurance and control, financial comparisons and loan package review. 

This can help businesses save time, make faster loan approvals and improve customer satisfaction.

This also enables companies to free up the resources so they can focus on more high-value tasks.

 

Claim Processing

 

Faster and accurate claim processing is a top priority for insurance companies.

Collecting and verifying information from various bank websites can be quite data and document-intensive. It requires agents to check the accuracy of the data carefully. 

This often results in delayed claim compensation, annoying customers in desperate need.

RPA enables quick data gathering from various disparate sources, whether it is in a paper-based or digital format. 

Huge amounts of claim data can be moved quickly to centralized storage for validation. This reduces the overall claim processing time from days to hours. 

Moreover, financial process automation can also avoid the errors caused due to missing customer claims, or collecting and entering wrong information.

 

Benefits of RPA in BFSI

 

According to Gartner, 80% of leaders in the financial sector are already using some form of RPA for various purposes. Some of the benefits of financial process automation:

1. 1. 1. Time Saver: Various time and motion research studies show that RPA can reduce the time needed to perform specific tasks up to 90%.

1. 1. 2. Reduction in Expenses: The consulting company Deloitte estimates that organizations in North America have achieved a 30 to 35% cost reduction due to the deployment of RPA technologies. Some more optimistic forecasts from firms like Accenture suggest an 80% cost decrease with RPA technologies for many manual tasks.
      3. Better accuracy & Increased overall efficiency: The RPA technologies have increased overall employee well-being and job satisfaction by eliminating rudimentary processes. It has reduced stress due to human error.
      4. Limited additional infrastructure costs: Implementing RPA, in general, does not require significant changes to the infrastructure. These applications are cheaper to build, reusable and scalable without additional investments.
      5. Scaling operations seamlessly: Robots can work without a break and can be scaled up and down based on volumes.
      6. Business teams can be self-sufficient: They can be trained to manage their RPA software Increased and improve        regulatory compliance

About SALIX Data 

For over 20 years, SALIX Data has provided more than 2,500 customers with ways to streamline their business through technology and outsourcing solutions.   

 

SALIX’s expertise in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) allows organizations to automate repetitive, mundane tasks with intelligent software that simulates human behavior enabling business users to devote more time to serving customers or other higher-value work.  

 

At SALIX, we have solutions that fit every sized organization that will reduce costs and improves quality.  

 

Talk to us today or schedule a free workflow assessment to learn how we can help you maximize your RPA investment by identifying the best time to introduce RPA into your business. Let SALIX enable your best people to do what they are best at more often.