DIXterous 4 : ‘Banking’ on intelligent automation to survive the pandemic and look beyond
Dr.Dinesh Chandrasekar (DC)
Chief Strategy Officer & Country Head, India, Centific AI | Nasscom Deep Tech ,Telangana AI Mission & HYSEA - Mentor & Advisor | Alumni of Hitachi, GE & Citigroup | DeepTech evangelist |Author & Investor| Be Passionate
Retail banking, otherwise known as consumer banking, plays a critical role in the development of an economy. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the barriers for the banking sector, in a way it has impacted other sectors, with the repercussions of lock-downs and restricted spending. While on one hand, financial institutions need to rethink their business strategies to keep the cash flowing in, they need to look for ways to tackle the challenges in keeping the operations running smooth. This act of balancing the trade requires a certain degree of strategic thinking, however digitalization and automation once again emerge as key solutions that can be seen as the savior.
Below, are a few hurdles that may impact the day-to-day operations for banks, followed by solutions than can help banks overcome these impediments.
1. External threats such as COVID-19 – While the current Corona virus is just one instance of how pandemics can disrupt operations, it is to be taken as a lesson to learn from. Especially for traditional banks which could not foresee and prepare themselves to operate in such a situation.
Solution: Introduce work from home (WFH) practices that are supported with cognitive automation solutions. These solutions can that handle unstructured data from textual information, scanned documents, and PDFs, thus enabling processes such as loan processing. This allows employees working from home to be free from repetitive tasks and focus more on judgemental operations.
2. Dependence on branches – Often the over dependence on branches and ATMs lead to increase in manhours while making it a less friendly model, especially during a time when customers are sceptical of physically visiting branches.
Solution: Mobile banking backed with AI chatbots which are equipped with non-linear dialogue capabilities help customers navigate through the site, thus offering a perfect fit for the situation. Furthermore, shifting branch operations to a digital platform can allow banks to bring down the rental costs associated with these physical branches.
3. Service requests – Service requests which require personnel intervention can be a challenge in times of practicing social distancing norms.
Solution: Automating tasks such as generating statements, alerts, and troubleshooting with service chatbots.
Work from home has emerged as the new norm for the banking sector and many banks are assessing ways to keep their operations running by investing in digitalization. This is evident with leading banks in the U.S., such as Bank of America transitioning over 175,000 employees to work from home for a period of two-and-a-half months, and Citigroup witnessing a 300% increase in remote access.1
It is to be noted that in this scenario, early adapters will emerge as the winners of the digital race, leaving behind their slower counterparts. According to the World Retail Banking Report 2020, banks that are embracing agile and platform-based models are gaining a competitive edge in terms of increasing customer reach, improving operational efficiencies, increasing business profitability, and offering personalized services. However, according to the report, only 39% of traditional banks have robust data capabilities, while 24% use data effectively. Furthermore, the report reveals that 75% of the bank executives state that data handling is slowed by manual processes, data duplication, and outdated systems. Consequently, it can be said that the resistance to digital transformation can mainly be attributed to apprehensions around cybersecurity and regulations.
As such, the digital era of banking offers a host of benefits to financial institution that allow them to reach a wider customer base and increase revenues. Below we will see a few of these competitive advantages:
1. Open banking platform – which utilizes APIs that enable third party developers to build application that appeal to customers. This allows banks to offer new products as well as aggregate services.
2. Cloud native – to overcome the challenges of legacy IT investment with scalability options.
3. Process automation – eliminate the need to allocate workforce for repetitive tasks and staff them on critical operations.
4. Virtual – enabling banks to go branchless with their operations, making it an apt fit for situations like the current pandemic
5. Personalized services – with AI-enabled chatbots that capture consumer insights, banks can offer personalized services, which in turn helps in cross-selling.
Selecting the right RPA platform for your digital transformation is key to succeed in the journey for digital transformation. While the ongoing pandemic has compelled most enterprises to adopt WFH models to ensure business continuity, the fact remains that intelligent automation will remain a key platform to catapult organizations to the next level on the digital landscape. CInDE (Cognitive Intelligence through Data & Experience) Intelligent Automation solutions, offered by Pactera Edge can help organizations in transforming business processes at various stages. CInDE’s range of AI-chatbots will help enterprises seek their business goals while optimizing user experience by focusing on Cognitive Intelligence services + RPA. The customer-centric hyper intelligent automation platform serves as a one-stop-shop that enables organizations to stay ahead of competition, by offering powerful AI components which enhance operations in terms of both agility and quality.
Sources:
https://worldretailbankingreport.com/resources/winning-with-a-sustainable-platform/
https://www.10xds.com/blog/rpa-improve-work-from-home-productivity/
Thank you
Dinesh Chandrasekar DC*