Almost any financial organization is currently constrained by the complexity of its processes. They are swamped with regulations that need to be followed and that are always changing. Compliance activities that need to be timely executed, tracked and recorded. A countless number of spreadsheets their staff needs to work with, maintain and report on. This complexity, inefficiency and lack of process consistency and manual tasks have a cost. It is taking thousands of hours from strategical positions. The finance industry is bleeding millions of dollars just to compile, reconcile and interpret data. Inaccurate information, human errors and lack of real-time access to data are also costing money. And this is why they need workflow automation.
Labor, for example, is the single largest driver of high compliance costs. With a global average distribution (57%) going into labor, according to LexisNexis’ report. The increasing number of regulations has also caused the due diligence process to take longer. The average time that takes to onboard a mid-sized company now is 70% longer than in 2017. With managing costs increasing, banks are focusing on cost management to improve efficiency. 75% of surveyed participants say that’s a priority.
Data reveals that digital transformation in financial institutions is long overdue. In order to increase productivity and efficiency and meet today’s challenges, financial institutions must bring process automation software onboard. Let’s jump now into some challenges that show the industry needs business process improvement.
6 Challenges To Solve With A Workflow Automation Software
As we discussed the financial industry is behind in the digital transformation career. Its adoption of process automation is imperative to cope with present challenges and cost rises. Let’s now explain how to face critical challenges and improve cost management, with workflow automation software.
1. Inefficiency & Low Productivity
The industry heavily relies on manual work. Some financial institutions have sped up their process improvement projects. However, they still rely on emails, spreadsheets, paper-based applications and phone calls. The report mentioned earlier says that these inefficiencies are also causing customer friction and loss of business.
In the same direction, from 10% to 40% of business leaders‘ time is going into activities that are not core to their job. This means that up to 3 hours a day may be going into doing mundane tasks. All this can be greatly reduced or even eliminated when you use workflow automation software to automate processes.
→ How to Automate Manual Tasks with Digital Workflows
2. Dirty Data
More than 50% of surveyed decision-makers blame disparate data systems as one of the top causes of inefficiencies. According to an Experia report, US organizations believe that at least 32% of their data is not accurate. The same assures that 27% of these organizations’ revenue goes wasted because of inaccurate or incomplete customer and prospect data.
Another Experia document reports that human error accounts for 60% of dirty data. These inaccuracies can remain hidden for years. This makes it even more difficult to detect and deal with when it is actually found. As a result cost increases and customer experience suffers. Using business process automation technology can help financial institutions to eliminate it.
3. Inconsistent Processes
The lack of automated processes in the financial industry generates great inconsistency across lines of businesses. Financial institutions rarely spend time analyzing their processes or discussing how to streamline them. This not only creates customer experience friction but also increases operational cost. Not to mention that the learning curve for a new employee to become productive is longer.
Financial institutions can easily map and automate their processes with workflow automation tools. By doing that they can assure everyone follows the same route every single time. They can build workflows and automate processes end to end. This means across the entire organization, getting rid of data silos and inconsistency.
4. Lack of Visibility and Reporting
When organizations manage data across different applications is always a challenge to have the full picture. Data silos not only make people work double on many occasions but also difficult timely access to data and reporting. A lot of time goes just on obtaining the information (again a lot of time goes into manual tasks).
Financial institutions can eliminate data silos when they automate their processes end to end. It means using automation tools that allow for data integration. Some workflow automation tools will allow them to automate processes across different departments instead of using different tools for each one. They will help financial institutions to have full visibility of their business processes across the entire organization.
→ How to Brake Data Silos with a Digital Process Automation Tool
5. Lack of Real-Time Data Access
The lack of visibility created by data silos and their reliance on manual work slow down access to data and decision making. The great dependence on email, spreadsheets and paper-based documents delay access to information and make data update hard to obtain. By adopting digital workflows and managing resources this way, financial institutions can have instant access to everything happening in their organizations.
How many applications were submitted, how many are pending. How many were denied, why, by who. Assets that were allocated, immediate credit report access and more. By using process automation software financial institutions can manage documents, employees, clients, vendors, projects, communications and more from a single dashboard.
6. Lagging Digital Capabilities and Remote Workforce
According to McKinsey, 60% to 85% of customers prefer handling their everyday transactions digitally. With generations such as Gen Z that are digitally native. They are reluctant to do business with financial institutions that are not digital. In addition, we have a growing remote workforce for which digital capabilities will need to be built. Adopting digital workflows and process automation technologies is the only way to serve these needs.
The average retail bank has from 300 to 800 back-office processes alone. Unless they automate processes with workflow automation tools they won’t be able to deliver the customer experience consumers expect. Or provide the tools to their remote workforce to do their work efficiently and effectively.
Today around 50% of current work activities can be automated. 6 out of 10 current occupations have at least 30% of activities that can be automated. The potential savings, work and process improvement of process automation technology in the financial industry are immense. Now it’s up to them to make the best use of them.
Use Virtus Flow to Improve Finance Processes with Workflow Automation
Virtus Flow is a No-Code workflow automation software. Our programmers designed it to help anyone to automate their processes without IT skills. We are specialized in process automation for financial institutions. We have worked for banks and credit unions for many years. Our team has helped them to improve their finance processes across the entire organization.
With Virtus Flow Financial Institutions will be able to:
- Automate processes without writing a line of code
- Automate processes for different departments or lines of businesses as opposed to buying different apps
- Manage customers, vendors, employees, documents and more
- Manage Cases or Tickets with a dedicated app Create dynamic forms that can share or publish to their website (for example to start applications online)
And so much more….Let’s talk.
