How to Improve the Financial Services Industry with Artificial Intelligence and RPA

As consumers and businesses continue to seek personalized banking experiences, the financial services industry is responding with technological tools that can help fulfill those interests. An uptick in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) has provided financial services firms with integrated solutions that allow them to offer more precise financial forecasts and personalized services for everyone in the process.

What they are: RPA is a software category that allows financial services firms to automate functions that previously required significant human interaction but not a tremendous amount of thought. For instance, RPA software can automatically reconcile account balances, significantly reducing the time to perform this task. On the other hand, AI uses data to actually “think” similarly to how a human would, allowing it to anticipate patterns, make forecasts and respond intelligently to inputs. One way that the financial services industry uses AI is by employing chatbots on banking sites that can answer common customer questions with human-like responses.

Because RPA and AI are advancing every day via the latest technological innovations and advancements, they are expected to help improve the financial services industry exponentially. Following are several ways that this transformation might take place.

Expand RPA to Eliminate Repetitive Human Tasks

RPA is already present in a number of banking functions, but if the financial services industry could expand it further, it would reduce the number of hours that humans must perform repetitive tasks such as automatically generating financial reports and compliance documents, filing the paperwork required when customers open new accounts, automating the underwriting process of mortgage loans, transcribing conversations that take place on recorded lines and cutting the time required of loan processing decisions.

Although RPA cuts the need for human involvement in many banking tasks, it does require humans to create the systems, set them up and “train” the programs on each financial system’s proprietary processes. However, although that setup period can be lengthy, the work put in early will allow for the elimination of hundreds of hours of work later for everyone involved in the banking process.

AI Can Evolve to Master Risk Assessment, Fraud Detection

The financial services industry is currently using AI tools for such categories as customer service management and fraud detection, but these tools can improve even further as AI technology is perfected.

For example, as AI continues to understand more about investments, it could eventually serve as a wealth management advisor, predicting future performance and advising customers on the most accurate financial decisions to drive growth.

By boosting the use of RPA and AI, the financial services industry would benefit from significant cost savings, 24/7 work completion, a complete audit trail of every action performed, and an ability to scale those programs as the financial company grows as well.