For the first time in India, a bank is using software robotics to automate their banking transactions; and the scale of the operations is so massive, that other banks are bound to take notice and replicate it for better efficiency.
ICICI Bank, which is India’s largest private bank, announced a giant leap in banking, when they announced deployment of 200 software robotics for performing 10 lakh banking transactions daily.
And this is just the start. As per reports coming in, ICICI Bank will more than double the number of such software robots to 500 by the end of the year. This means more automation, and more transactional efficiency.
Ms. Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank, said, “ICICI Bank has a legacy of pioneering innovations in technology to create propositions that provide increased convenience to customers..”
Which Banking Operations Would Be Automated?
ICICI Bank has introduced software robotics based automation for more than 200 business processes, most of them are repetitive, high volume and time consuming.
As per reports coming in, some of the banking operations which would be now automated by software robotics include: retail banking operations, agri-business, trade & forex, treasury and human resources management, PAN/Aadhaar Card validation, IRCTC refund processing, airwaybill updation from courier sites, priority sector lending code updation, mobile number update for Internet banking, NEFT file preparation, handling chargeback disputes, payment receipt updation among others.
In total, more than 200 banking process have been re-engineered so that robots can automate it, and increase efficiency.
For example, say a customer fills in the details for applying for personal loan. Once the data is captured, robots will take over the remaining steps, which were earlier done by human. In case of personal loans approval on credit cards, robots will take 4 hours, instead of 8 to make the decision.
As per ICICI Bank, customers can now save 60% of the time, and efficiency is bound to increase by 100%, as a direct result of the automation.
How Will It Work?
These banking operations would be automated using facial & voice recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, bots and more technologies under robotics.
The process of automation is as follows:
- The software robots deployed would first capture and then interpret the information coming in from various sources, within the system.
- Based on the inputs, the robots will recognize patterns among the huge collection of data received, related to banking processes
- Run banking processes, across multiple applications
Some of the major activities which these robots are expected to perform include: data entry and validation, automated formatting, multi-format message creation, text mining, workflow acceleration, reconciliations and currency exchange rate processing among others.
Few days back, we had reported that HDFC Bank has introduced robots for performing customer service for those customers, who enter their branches. However, ICICI Bank has actually implemented robotics and automation into the core operations, thereby introducing a new paradigm of banking in India.
Although ICICI Bank hasn’t informed of any job cuts due to such mass-scale automation, they have informed that software robotics will benefit employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and assist their retail expansion in various cities.