March 16, 2021 The Benefits of Using RPA in Financial Services

To optimize operations and improve processes use robotic process automation (RPA) to improve your financial services.

Banks, financial institutions, and insurance companies are digitally transforming to meet client needs better. To optimize operations and improve processes means you need to do more than upgrading systems or outsourcing processes. You need to innovate. One way to achieve this is by using robotic process automation to improve your financial services’ speed and accuracy.

What is RPA?

Robotic process automation (RPA) refers to any program that can be easily set to do basic, repetitive tasks. (Tasks such as filing received forms, sending a receipt, checking documents for correct data, organizing data in folders, and updating databases with the most current information, etc.). RPA creates and deploys a software robot with the ability to launch and operate other software.

Why RPA makes sense as a service in financial institutions?

With the increasing complexity of financial services, the financial sector has been an early adopter of RPA. Many repetitive back-office tasks can be performed by RPA quickly and efficiently, allowing employees to focus on high return tasks. RPAs also ensure that compliance and regulatory filing requirements are taken care of on time and efficiently.

How RPAs benefit financial institutions and their customers:

The bottom line always comes down to finding out what this technology can do for you. If it isn’t directly improving your business or increasing customer service, there is no use in implementing it.

• Save money: RPA cuts staffing costs across the board. It also allows your highly trained staff to focus on their core competencies and not get bogged down in paperwork.
• Eliminates errors: RPA is especially useful a doing repetitive tasks where humans are prone to error. The human need for variety causes half of all human error. RPAs ensure works get done error-free and ensure that all regulatory requirements will be met on time.
• Increase capacity without hiring more staff: With the ability of RPAs to work quickly and diligently, you can scale up the size of your financial operation without the added cost of hiring more staff to cover the increased bureaucratic workload.
• Easy implementation: RPAs require no custom software or deep system integration, meaning that it’s cost-effective to install and is online and doing its job almost immediately.
• Upgrades are possible: RPAs can be upgraded with cognitive technologies such as speech recognition and natural language processing to allow it to do more complex tasks if that fits your business’s needs.

How can you implement RPAs as effectively as possible?

Technology is only as useful as how it is being employed. If you attempt to use a stapler as a hammer, you’ll have poor results. There are some tips for ensuring that RPAs are being used efficiently by your financial institution.

• Manage expectations: Naturally, vendors will try to sell you the moon when you are purchasing RPAs. Like any new technology, it will take time to integrate RPAs into your organization entirely.
• Consider the impact first:  What do you want the primary focus of your RPA to be? Do you want to increase your ROI? Do you wish to expedite your customer service? Are you looking to expand? Understanding how you expect RPAs to impact your business first will allow you to decide better how you want them used.
• Involve your IT department: Your IT department is going to be dealing with your RPAs most frequently. Ensure they are kept in the loop on how you plan to employ RPAs and your vision for how they’ll impact your business.

RPAs can be the catalyst for the digital transformation of your financial institution. It will save you money, cut down on costly errors, and scale with you as you increase your size and services. RPAs are the perfect partner for your financial service.

Subscribe to Industry Today