At first glance, 'robotic process automation' (RPA) sounds like the solution mainly helps in the manufacturing industry. While such companies have found many great uses for the technology, the truth is that plenty of sectors and businesses benefit from RPA. Today, we will focus on the benefits it brings to the financial industry.

In essence, any time-intensive, repetitive action can be handed over to specialized software robots, meaning that employees are free to focus on monitoring, handling exceptions, and tasks that require creativity and critical thinking.

For example, RPA solutions have proven particularly useful in anti-money laundering processes. Instead of a bank having employees search for relevant data in internal and external databases, then comb through the information, a digital solution can immediately gather everything into an easy-to-read report for the person.

In a broader view, these are the advantages that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) brings:

Lower costs

Due to the high volumes of data and its required security, day-to-day operations in the financial industry can be quite labor-intensive. The keyword here is can, as technology and automation have taken on a great part of the workload that previously fell to people to complete.

The effect is easy to deduce - more work getting done in less time, by fewer employees. As a result, companies become leaner and can focus more on growth instead of maintenance. Whether it is a bank, investment firm, or insurance broker, bots can be leveraged to speed up repetitive processes.

For example, just a few decades ago, it took banks days if not weeks to release credit cards, as they had to do background checks and judge risks on a case-by-case basis. Today, they achieve the same in a fraction of the time thanks to specialized software.

Better security and fewer errors

As a highly regulated industry, disruptions and mistakes can have large ramifications, both in the legal and PR sense. As much as a highly trained and skilled workforce can lower the chances of an error and mitigate its results, the risk is still there, especially considering that repetitive tasks tend to lower people's attention and workplace engagement.

In this context, Robotic Process Automation proves its worth by giving companies a veritable army of bots that gather data and perform checks and analyses. The software provides the same attentiveness and follows guidelines to the letter, greatly limiting the chance of an error occurring.

With this in mind, RPA can become an invaluable tool in risk management and compliance reporting. By generating automated reports for various components, like the business' Customer Relationships Management platform, the staff can make quick and data-backed decisions.

Better user experience for customers

At first glance, you might think that RPA is useful only for the back office, but many businesses, including those in the financial industry, have employed chatbots to improve customer service and experience. Here are the two primary use cases:

• Improving the onboarding process through automated helpers, providing guidance to new customers, and processing their documents in record time.

• Providing support and answering common queries instantly. Chatbots can be programmed to handle the most common and easy-to-answer questions, freeing employees to handle more specialized requests.

One of the biggest advantages of digital automation is that your tech partner can adapt the solution to your specific needs. For example, if your organization needs a better way of onboarding employees instead of clients, the same bots can serve that purpose as well. The same goes for adapting chatbots for lead generation and upselling, besides providing valuable info for existing customers.

Here are these ideas in an example - leveraging RPA to improve the lead pipeline for an insurance firm. A chatbot can simplify the process through some basic intro questions to determine what kind of services the person wants. From then, it can ask for the relevant information and cross-check it with the database. The program can also provide useful info and schedule a call with a qualified employee.

The result is a quick process through which both the visitor and firm get all the info they need and can move on to the next step in the pipeline, without an employee having to be involved.

Sustainable scalability

Last but certainly not least, all the benefits we presented above are scalable. With the right RPA setup, companies can grow their team and client base without worrying about a decrease in efficiency or the quality of their services. To reuse the previous example, a chatbot does just as well whether it is helping hundreds or tens of thousands of people.

As such, businesses no longer have to worry as much about the usual challenges of growth, like training new teams, adapting conventional processes to accommodate new markets or services, and ensuring compliance while managing increased data.

As technology evolves and we find new ways to make our jobs and lives easier, digitalization and automation are no longer seen as opportunities to increase efficiency, but as necessities. The big questions then are what should be automated and how can we do this with minimal disruption.

Our aim at Accesa is to answer those questions for all our clients and find the best solution that not only meets their needs but helps future-proof their operations. It is for that reason that we have gathered a 40+ team of highly skilled and motivated certified RPA specialists and became UiPath Gold Partners.

If your business is prepared to leverage automation to gain the benefits we have presented in this article, contact us. We are more than happy to help!