Banking: How Automating Back Office Tasks Increases Productivity and Efficiency

Why should I use automation?

Implementing automation is a powerful way to future-proof your banking business — and compete in a fiercely competitive market. With the rise of digital banks, traditional finance institutions are under increasing pressure to operate more efficiently and deliver the fast and frictionless experiences that modern consumers demand. Unfortunately, reliance on legacy systems and a disconnect between front and back office operations is holding them back. 

Automating your back office processes makes delivering the streamlined experiences that your customers expect possible and allows you to unlock a whole host of other benefits: 

Lower costs

Not only does automating paper-based processes eliminate the costs associated with manual data entry, but it also reduces the time it takes to locate, retrieve, sort, and file documents. Centralizing information held in numerous emails, spreadsheets and systems in one place also saves time and money and facilitates a more productive workforce. This increase in operational efficiency relieves your teams from the burden of handling repetitive admin tasks, reducing duplicate work and the need to hire additional headcount when the workload increases. The process discovery step in an automation project also allows you to identify bottlenecks that are costing you money and make the necessary changes for optimization.

Mitigate errors

Mistakes happen. And, in the financial sector, those mistakes can sometimes come with a high price. Low-code automation allows you to put strict governance procedures in place to help minimize errors across your business. You could automate:
•    Verification of data completeness and accuracy 
•    Access management to ensure certain data is restricted for greater security

This can lead to better customer experiences, reduced compliance risks, and less time wasted on correcting mistakes that could have been avoided. 

Unleash your workforce

By automating the simpler, more repetitive back office tasks, you can free up your teams to focus on higher-value ones. For example, you could dedicate more time to supporting the front office in responding to requests and resolving complex customer queries. It’s also easier to attract and retain top talent when you can automate the more tedious tasks they’d rather avoid.

Faster service

Today’s customer expects lightning-fast responses from their bank, and tech-savvy fintechs are catering to this need by modernizing the back office operations that enable the delivery of quick and intuitive digital services. Automation can help supercharge your service delivery so you can give customers the rapid support they expect, from quick loan approvals to smooth onboarding experiences. 

Maintain compliance

If you’re handling compliance manually using legacy systems, you’ll know it can be an error-prone, time-consuming process. Low-code automation eliminates those problems, allowing you to seamlessly stay on top of regulatory changes, increase visibility with clear audit trails, and minimize the risk of inadvertent non-compliance. 

What tasks can I automate?

1. Payments

Once a loan application has been approved, you can automate the process of sending funds to the applicant. This ensures the correct funds will be sent on time and means that your customers won’t be left waiting or frustrated by a mistake that then requires additional time to rectify.  

2. Transfers

Complex financial transfers require compliance and accuracy. Automation can handle this process, eliminating errors and increasing the efficiency of the transfer. 

As an example, we helped automate the paper-based financial processes of a global hedge fund administrator, allowing them to deliver enterprise-wide transparency for $29 billion in assets. In addition, this solution helped them increase operational efficiency, reduce complexity, and ensure regulatory compliance.

3. Approvals

With low-code technology, you can automate how applicant information is collected, stored, and processed. This leads to faster, more consistent approvals. In the case of AEON Credit Service, we helped them to reduce credit card approval times from two weeks to under 30 minutes using digital process automation. 

4. Exceptions

Automation can help you avoid hold-ups when incoming requests don’t meet requirements. VKB Bank, for example, suddenly had to deal with a huge spike in credit deferral applications at the start of the pandemic in 2020. 

Each request typically took their team between 40-60 minutes to complete, causing a huge drain on their resources. Working together, we helped VKB Bank create an automated solution that increased process efficiency by 90%. This improvement reduced the time to process deferral request applications to between 4-6 minutes.

How can I get started?

Modernizing your back office with low-code automation is a fantastic way to boost productivity, increase efficiency, enhance customer service, and give you a firm foundation to drive your business forwards. Doing this can also enable citizen developers to collaborate with, rather than rely on, IT teams for the transformation of business processes, helping you be more agile and deliver value more quickly.

To learn more about optimizing your back office banking processes, download our Essential Guide to Modernizing Banking Operations.