Automating 5 key banking processes

*Due to client data protection and business secret, we are not allowed to specify the bank.

Like any large bank, this specific bank comes across many transactions that require booking into legacy core systems, which takes a lot of time and manual labor.

A way to the internal center of excellence

Introducing RPA technology included automating the first few processes, holding workshops to showcase the solution, as well as helping scale-up development and deployment of software robots during seasonal highs.

The development phase resulted in an arsenal of robots taking over most of the structured manual work, significantly increasing operational efficiency.

Lastly, we made sure to dot our i's and cross our t's when helping with the establishment of the client's internal center of excellence. Now, an in-house RPA team takes care of process automation while we provide our know-how and bring best practices to the table.

Our client is a large bank that employs over 4000 people, covers 118 branches, has 1.3 million retail users, and serves 60 000 corporate clients.

Clear benefits

- People no longer have to worry about generating reports

- Bookings of special fees, blacklist removals, and changes in card limits are now automated

- Loan plans entry into internal applications is faster and error-free

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The following sections hide information about the bank’s internal challenges, the solution and its functionalities, guidelines the software robots follow, and the results of their implementation. Click on the question you wish to find the answer to.

Greeting the automation

Steering the RPA initiative in the bank started with a pilot process to prove the technology and show the added value of RPA. After that, the client got our support through discovery workshops, when we together made a list of potential processes for automation, evaluated them using cost-benefit analysis, and created an RPA roadmap.

Last but definitely not least, the client got production-ready software robots ready to set employees free from carrying out a specific task. Since the roadmap is an ever-changing list that has been helping to decide what to automate next, the RPA initiative is turning into lifelong technology-enhanced learning.

After a thorough search for non-complex processes that drain much time with repetitive steps, a couple of them stood out as the best candidates for automation.

A few of them were concerning internal processes like generating reports for middle and upper management and inserting loan plans into internal applications. The rest were regarding B2C and B2B processes: bookings of special fees, blacklist removals, and changes in card limits.

All of them were successfully automated, opening possibilities for further automation and leaving the client with a better understanding of RPA technology.

Automated processes have different levels of complexity. To bring RPA technology closer to you, let’s start with a detailed description of a simple process of removing clients from the blacklist which has been automated.

  • A bank official inputs the requested data into a ticketing system
  • The robot starts by collecting all the tickets and copying them into SharePoint
  • One by one, the robot inputs the requests into the core banking application
  • The robot takes a screenshot that the process is completed successfully

Other robots include integrations with the existing system such as SharePoint, Oracle BI Portal (Java web application), Front office system (Java desktop application), RC (ticketing system – Java web application), Host Terminal (IBM terminal), Databases (SQL, IBM DB2, Oracle), Various internal and external API’s, Excel, Word.

An example of a more complex process is that of generating monthly reports for management. In that case, each month a robot creates a report about key account states in the following way:

  • Opening a desktop app and exporting raw data for each key account to the first excel worksheet (every account has one excel table)
  • Grouping all rows by currency
  • Adding a subtotal row for each currency
  • Formatting the table by the given rules
  • Doing a similar thing for the second sheet, but with a different source of data and filters
  • Generating one final table containing statistics regarding key accounts after all of the reports are created
  • Transferring all files to a shared disk in a way that all responsible persons can access them
  • Alerting persons of interest via email upon process completion

The bank got our full assistance with the detection of processes suitable for automation, development of the robots, as well as our ongoing support. Being a development company first, we covered a wider range of processes by integrating RPA with our custom software and AI modules.

As a small and agile firm, we provided the first results in record time and helped this large bank become more efficient, reach cost savings, and leave the employees with more time for more meaningful tasks.

Robots’ know-how

- Fetching new transaction data

- Filling in all fields when processing transactions (e.g., dates, interests, quarterly fees)

- Creating a report from a template and forwarding it to management