11 Important Banking Processes to Automate with Workflow Management Software in 2022

In a recent report, Fortune Business Insights has estimated that the global process automation market size is projected to grow up to 7.64 billion USD in the near upcoming years. Analytics also expect the market size of RPA technology to increase exponentially. Current economic instability coupled with the global pandemic situation has made banking firms look for various ways to reduce costs, push their revenues and offer a better customer experience. The banking industry offers a multitude of services comprising various front and backend processes. Now, almost all of the processes in the banking industry can be automated to give flawless customer service with the help of workflow management software.

A workflow management software automated your processes by boosting your overall productivity, lowering costs and enriching the customers’ experience. Since the banking industry is equipped with multidimensional processes, let us dive into some of the many of those processes that can be automated using an absolute workflow management software.

Loan Processing and Validation

A typical loan processing includes extracting relevant information from the submitted documents and integrating this information with documents to produce a due diligence, where the approval of the loan is decided. This is a manual and tedious process. Using workflow management software in loan processing can simplify this process by reducing the time taken and keeping it error-free. As systems use machine learning, automation can extract all the required data from the submitted documents and verify their authenticity. Bots with business logic will prompt the customer to fix the data if there’s any error or discrepancy. This will ensure safer loan decisions.

Know Your Customer (KYC)

One of the most critical and mandatory processes in a bank is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. According to a study by Thomas Reuters, it has been discovered that around 60 million USD is spent on KYC compliance by banks annually, while some of the banks even spend up to 500 million USD on KYC compliance and CDD. Moreover, 13% of corporate treasures have changed banks due to the bad experience they faced during the KYC process. Thus, banks have started to use process automation software to collect customers’ information. They screen, process and validate the collected data. The processing time is also greatly reduced and the adherence to security and compliance is improved. This usage of workflow management software in the banking industry for the KYC process has significantly reduced the need for staff, minimized the costs, and compliance errors. 

Related article: How to Automate the KYC process with Autonom8’s Low-code Platform?

Credit Card Processing

Usually, credit card application processing takes up to two weeks. This developed a dissatisfaction with the customers, which made most of them cancel their credit card requests. However, with the introduction of workflow management software, the speed of credit card processing has improved remarkably. Now the automated process only needs a couple of hours to collate, run background verifications, and check the customer’s eligibility. 

Fraud Detection

As technology evolves with time, so does fraudulent activities. With each and every transaction that occurs, there might be chances of fraudulent transactions. As it is not possible for banks to check every transaction, the workflow management software deploys an “if-then process to detect any fraud”. If the automation software detects any fraud, then it flags the specific transaction and directs it to the respective department. The most complex and data-intensive process of anti-money laundering (AML) can also be automated using workflow management software. This decreases the workload of bank staff, time and also reduces costs to the banks. 

Account Closure

Every month banks face the burden of closing their customers’ bank accounts. Non-compliance of the customers and delay in submission of necessary documents are the main reason for this increase in the burden on banks staff. It usually requires the cancellation of direct debits, interest charges, transfer of funds, standing orders and more manually to close a bank account. Nowadays, banks can automate this account closure process with workflow management software, where the customers can close their bank accounts just by filling out an electronic form. The form is then sent to a central mailbox where the automation software will handle the account closure process with no manual intervention.

Mortgage Processing

Mortgage processing is one of the laborious and tedious processes that involve many days of processing the mortgage applications. It may take more than a month to complete the process as it usually contains employment verifications, inspection and credit checks before approving the mortgage loan. An error on either side will delay the already long process. But with the incorporation of automation in banking firms, the duration and errors of this tedious process have been greatly reduced. Banks have started to use algorithm-based systems to accelerate this long process and complete the processing without any errors.

General Ledger

All banks maintain a ledger to track their important information such as liabilities, assets, expenses, and revenue and it is updated regularly. Maintaining this ledger is crucial to preparing financial statements. The data is vast and also it is handled manually, so it is prone to mistakes. However, with the workflow management software, this process has a quick turnaround time and no errors. The workflow software already has a set of predefined rules to streamline the process and keep it error-free.

Customer Service

Nowadays customers expect that the banks should listen to their requests and grievances as soon as possible. This causes immense stress on the banking staff as they have to address customers’ needs without causing any delay. The usage of bots in these situations will deliver the needs of the customers and also relieve stress on the staff. It causes a sense of independence for the customers, which they prefer, as they interact with the automation software. A Gartner report says that automated customer service will reduce the agent workload by 8% in 2024. Conversational AI can be embedded into the bots. These chatbots will complete the customers’ requests without any sort of manual intervention. If the customer needs further clarification, then the chatbot will forward it to the necessary department. 

Related article: How to Improve Banking Processes using Workflow Management Software?

Accounts Payable

Accounts Payable (AP) is another monotonous and time-consuming process that the banks have to process. It involves the digitization of invoices from vendors using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This traditional process extracts the data from the required fields and validates them. With the advent of automation, banks have simplified this process. The errors are verified and the sellers receive their credits automatically in their bank accounts. 

Risk and Compliance Management

Every bank has to adhere to strict rules and regulations. Financial institutions spend a lot of money every year on compliance issues. Based on a survey by Thomas Reuters, it is estimated that banks have to increase the cost of compliance staff up to 47% in the coming years. Banks rely on external lawyers and counsel to best understand their compliance requirements. The legal jargon might not be clear to the financial institutions. Whereas workflow automation software will outline and define the compliance conditions for the organizations and update the conditions regularly. Any new conditions that were laid by the government will be added to the software automatically. The business users are informed about the tasks assigned to them. The financial institutions then receive regular progress reports. Streamlining the risk and compliance management using automation software will provide complete transparency and confidence in the compliance solution.

Summary 

 To keep their customers happy and reduce costs, banks have started to automate their processes. Autonom8’s workflow management software streamlines the processes and increases the bank’s efficiency in keeping with accordance to compliance and various government-related restrictions. As you have better access to your customers’ data, you can create an even more personalized solution to provide them with better customer service. Increase your bank’s growth steadily by connecting with your customer through our workflow management software for banking.

Contact us to know more about the workflow automation software. What are you waiting for? Schedule a demo with us now.