Automation in finance is just one way technology is advancing financial services — is your organization taking advantage of the latest and greatest tools?
Technology in the financial world continues to advance at an accelerated pace — which means your organization needs to know how to take advantage of the latest and greatest tools to stay ahead of the competition.
However, you shouldn’t just look to incorporate the latest and hope to succeed — real value comes from the right combination of people and technology. That’s the only way you can empower your employees to work more effectively and efficiently to meet today’s increasing customer demands for always-on service. So why not let automation do some of the heavy lifting for you?
Tools such as intelligent automation (IA) and conversational AI can not only simplify customer banking processes and free up internal resources to do more high-level work, they can also increase efficiencies, security and usable insights.
Here’s what you need to know about the current state of intelligent finance automation and how it can be applied.
What Is Intelligent Automation?
Intelligent automation (IA) is the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies to automate low-level tasks. IA is a fairly broad term, but you can consider it as an orchestrated collection of different tools — such as machine learning algorithms, natural language processing and robotic process automation — that allow bots to perform a set of defined rules-based activities.
Thanks to the use of AI, these bots are increasingly able to perform more complex tasks such as communicating with customers to answer simple queries, performing financial transactions and pulling data for analysis. This functionality allows live agents and financial professionals to spend less time on transactional or simple tasks and focus more on higher-value activities.
Benefits of intelligent automation in the finance industry
All benefits that result from automation in financial services follow one simple truth — it allows organizations to do more with less. It’s no secret that the past few years have been challenging for financial institutes looking to hire and retain employees.
The turnover rate for the front-line bank staff recently reached a high of 23.4% — despite increases in pay. At the same time, staffing shortages have continued to strain banks’ supervisory resources — an issue that the U.S. Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp believe contributed to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in 2023.
Intelligent automation is key for performing the necessary tasks that allow employees to perform their jobs efficiently, without the need to hire additional help. For example, our own boost.ai conversational AI platform consistently manages many of the more mundane and repetitive tasks, giving employees more time back in their day to focus on other priorities.
Empowering your employees and providing them with automated support to focus on higher-value tasks has a cascading effect, bringing benefits throughout your organization by:
- Improving the customer experience — Increased operational efficiency and automated responses means that your customers’ issues are resolved faster and they have access to more options and services.
- Allowing for greater scalability — Automation provides the capacity to scale operations without needing to hire more employees.
- Ensure greater consistency — Automation performs the same tasks the same way, every time; resulting in a reduced risk of errors and more reliable workflows.
- Reducing the risk of fraud — The capability to quickly identify possible fraudulent activity in data patterns allows automation to flag incidents of unusual activity or unauthorized access attempts.
- Extracting greater insights — Insights are only as good as the data sets used, and automation allows for the collection of greater amounts of data and the execution of more complex analytics models and algorithms.
- Increasing employee retention — Employee engagement is imperative for a strong employee retention strategy and for your bank’s overall success as satisfied employees are more likely to perform at a higher level.
- Creating incremental savings — Retaining happy customers, increasing efficiencies, building on more accurate insights and other benefits all add up to significant savings, one that McKinsey estimates to be as high as US $1 trillion for the global banking industry.
How can intelligent automation be applied to the finance industry?
Achieving these potential IA benefits requires financial institutes to balance human and machine-based competencies. Here are some recommendations on how to implement IA to maximize your efficiencies.
Look to streamline the customer journey
Your customers expect a modern, digital-first customer banking experience — which means immediate and stellar service. Banking customers no longer have the patience to dial into call centers. However, by first engaging with a virtual agent through automated chat or voice bots, customers can enjoy a more seamless experience.
Often, virtual agents can resolve over 90% of customer queries on average by assisting with online searches to find needed information or by providing direct answers. However, they can also elevate the more complex remaining tickets to human agents if necessary. This will free up your internal experts to do what they do best – provide high-quality personalized service.
In this, IA can quickly address customers’ concerns and resolve their queries or allow them to seamlessly continue their customer journey without having to leave your website.
Find ways to future-proof your services
Gen Z’s buying power rises every day and, according to a Bloomberg report, they now command $360 billion in disposable income. This tech-savvy, digital-first generation is not only your largest wave of future customers, but they are already your current customers. This means not only are they looking for instant assistance, but they’re also comfortable working with virtual agents and bots.
The best way to future-proof your customer’s banking experience? Offer customers a self-serve option that can transfer to a live agent for nuanced help as needed. The goal of a virtual agent isn’t to replace your customer service team, it’s to handle the simple, repetitive tasks that slow down their workflow. That way when more complex inquiries come through, they’re able to focus their full attention on resolving the issue in a prompt and personal manner.
Implementing an IA solution like conversational AI isn’t just about immediate gains, it’s vital for preparing for your future customers.
Employ ready-made digital strategy and solutions
85% of executives agree that fear holds back innovation efforts in their organizations. Yet nine out of 10 organizations are doing nothing to ease those fears. The good news is that, when it comes to realizing a digital strategy, you have support and don’t need to go it alone.
When you work with a partner like boost.ai that has a large portfolio of banking and credit union customers, you’re able to take advantage of proven processes for implementing finance automation. We have years of experience in implementing digital solutions along with accompanying digital strategies that are as analytical as they are adaptive and agile.
Here are our recommendations to assist with your implementation of intelligent automation technology:
- Ensure that your software is ready and able to communicate and share information with your existing systems so that your time to launch is significantly reduced. For example, our solutions come with a plethora of integrations, as well as 2,500 of the most common banking intents (loans, cards, etc.) already built-in.
- You’ll need robust IA governance to ensure that you have proper systems, processes and checks in place to mitigate risks, account for biases and properly make use of data and insights. Be sure to have your policies and procedures in place as your IA system works through the design, test and live phases.
- Have a plan to set up and test the workflows that will continue to guide the development of the technology. Be sure to rigorously test the workflows to ensure they work properly and in alignment with your organization's goals.
- Take the time to upskill your talent so that they’re comfortable working with data-driven insights and automated processes. Look for ways to certify select employees as AI trainers so that they’re able to continually update the system over time, allowing your solution to be flexible and adaptable.
When you partner with boost.ai, we utilize our extensive experience working with financial institutions to provide a smooth transition and a seamless customer experience. Your customers will be happy for always-on, easily accessible, and personalized service and your employees will be relieved from mundane tasks, high-volume stress and off-hour requests. Win-win!
And if you’re worried that researching a new tool such as a virtual agent will take too much valuable time and money? Don’t! With boost.ai, we provide custom demos at no cost to you – just ask!
FAQs
How is automation used in finance?
Automation in the finance industry is used to improve the efficiency of workflows and simplify processes. Automation eliminates manual tasks, efficiently captures and enters data, sends automatic alerts and instantly detects incidents of fraud. As a result, automation is improving the customer experience, allowing employees to focus on higher-level tasks and reducing overall costs.
Will the finance industry be automated?
In many ways, the finance industry is already automated. According to Gartner, roughly 80% of finance leaders have implemented or are planning to implement robotic process automation. In the United States, the top ten commercial banks are all using chatbots to engage with customers and market studies predict that natural language processing AI and automation in the banking segment is projected to grow at a CAGR of 21.8%.
What is an example of automation in banking?
Virtual assistants are a recent example of automation in banking. Voice bots can answer customer questions quickly and efficiently, reducing the burden on contact centers. Similar systems can be employed internally to support the work of live agents, providing instant displays of requested information as well as contextual prompts, alerts and notifications.