My name is Anna Senkova and today I will tell you how our team robotizes operational tasks in banks. If interested, welcome to cat.
To begin with, by "robot" in banks, we mean a software package that allows autonomously to perform certain sequential actions that are now performed by a person.
What types of robots exist:
- RPA - Robotic Process Automation - is a technology for automating business processes, which consists in the fact that simple work at a computer instead of a person is performed by a software package.
- IPA - Intelligent Process Automation - technology for intelligent automation of business processes. In this case, the robot not only performs simple actions like “copy-paste-compare-save”, but also has a decision-making function.
- Chatbots are technologies that imitate human speech behavior and are designed to communicate with real people, for example, bank customers.
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In April 2020, the first robot was implemented in Rosbank Dom to automate the process of making a loan decision. To understand its functionality - a little methodology: one of the stages of checking the employing company of a potential borrower is to confirm the ownership of the declared working phone number for the company's communication through independent sources. This is done in order to verify the data declared by the client. This functionality is mandatory when conducting solvency underwriting and was previously performed by employees in manual mode.
Now the mechanism is structured as follows: the robot compares the information from Yandex search results with the specified search criteria, according to which the phone is recognized as either belonging to a given company, or not belonging, or fraudulent.
The first results show the average processing time of one task by the robot in 2 minutes. Checks can be carried out in a 24-hour format, which makes it possible to use the information received when making a decision as soon as the working day of the credit analyst begins.
Robot settings understandable for business users The
robot generates tasks for itself from loan cases available in CRM Loris and works until all tasks are completed. Or it is possible to set up a work schedule taking into account time zones and non-working days, or even using Cron expressions
When introducing robotization, only the UiPath platform was used without any other software tools, except, of course, the Chrome browser, Microsoft Office and other software products that are almost always installed by users.
The robot acts like a human and, accordingly, uses the same infrastructure as a human, so it does not need separate powers if it has powers in the system like the person who previously performed the duties of the robot.
We faced some IT and security concerns due to the innovation of this approach. IT worried about the load on information resources, which, in their opinion, could arise due to the speed of the robot. Yes, a robot can do operations 5-10 times faster than a person, but it always waits for a response from an information system or a web resource (waiting for a full site load, window rendering, changing the “Loading” indicator, etc.), without which the process does not move further, besides, the robot does everything in one task, in one thread: like a human, but in a 24/7 mode.
In this project, a search engine is involved, which has not yet figured out a robot and still does not require captcha input (a means of protecting a site from bots and automatic systems), this shows the advantage of this approach over headless-browser approaches.
You can watch the work of the robot in real time, watching how it clicks on various buttons, moves the cursor, etc. There were some problems when disconnecting from a Remote Desktop (RDP) session. in this case, the user's Windows session stops rendering the graphical interface and the robot's work on the remote virtual workstation is interrupted, but this can be bypassed by connecting to the robot's workstation using a shadow connection (Mstsc / shadow command).
It is also planned to robotize processes at the stage of preparing a mortgage transaction and issuing a loan, processing customer requests, etc.
What are the benefits of implementing a robot?
- The robot works around the clock, removes the routine load from employees and does not make mistakes related to the human factor, while it does not occupy office space.
- The work of the robot is completely transparent, all actions are recorded in the logs and can be checked.
- RPA technologies do not require complex integration into the financial institution's IT landscape. He uses the existing system as a human would do.
- The robot can significantly improve the speed of processing banking operations, the efficiency of back-office and front-office processes in the bank, reduce the duration of processing client requests, and, consequently, free up front-office employees the time required for better customer service.
So far, we are not talking about the complete replacement of a person with a robot, since critical processes associated with high risk require analytical work of a person, but the preparatory operations of the same type may well be given to the robot.
To answer the question "What processes should be robotized?" you need to understand the following:
- Is the operation repetitive?
- Is the process the same every time?
- How laborious is the process?
- Are resources being spent on it that it makes sense to save?
If the answers are positive, then robotization will quickly show its effectiveness. If the implementation of robotization will take more time and resources than saving time and money, then it makes no sense to implement it.
One of the difficulties in compiling a program for a robot also lies in the fact that the obvious things for a person have to be described with maximum accuracy, to think over all the options to the smallest detail, since in a real environment a deviation from a given rule can be critical.
In conclusion, in the banking sector, in an increasingly competitive environment, all major players strive to maximize the opportunities available. RPA has been actively used for several years by many banks. The next step is IPA technology, which will minimize human participation without seriously increasing risks.