Few industries have embraced digitization as aggressively as financial services. One way to illustrate just how successful the industry has been at embracing new digital technologies is to look at the sheer volume of customers now comfortable engaging with their banks using online and mobile channels.

For instance, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation surveyed U.S. households and found that the percentage of Americans who access their bank accounts primarily through mobile increased from 9.5% in 2015 to 34% in 2019. The shift to digital accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic out of necessity, and it has reached the point where over half of all Americans would prefer to never visit an actual bank branch again.

Early adoption can lead to challenges

Banks are early adopters of technology, and their customers are eager to take full advantage of innovation. Nevertheless, traditional financial services companies face a big dilemma, especially when it comes to delivering the many benefits of automation to their customers. “There is no shortage of technology innovations among banks right now,” said Amit Saxena, vice president and general manager for ServiceNow’s Automation Engine. “Even though many of these banks are sitting on some of the latest technology, the way the technology has been thought about was to solve a specific use case and not in a way that revolutionizes connecting the front office to the middle office to the back office.”

The implications of this siloed, use-case-specific approach to automation are many. On the one hand, while multiple banks have invested large amounts in cutting-edge technologies, they still must integrate with legacy core banking systems. Not only can this be a big challenge for already overextended bank IT teams but the ultimate result for bank customers can also be far from ideal.

The inability to pull together myriad automation technologies in a way that provides a seamless customer experience also exposes traditional banks to competition from fintechs. “The fintechs have an advantage of starting with the latest tech stack and being cloud native in many ways,” Saxena said. “So they don’t have a lot of the technical debt other banks have to address and can launch products into the market quickly.”

Hyperautomation using a single data platform

Fortunately, there is an approach banks can embrace that leverages powerful automation tools such as RPA, low-code apps and document processing along with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning regardless of their portfolio of existing and new technologies. At the most basic level, hyperautomation takes the benefits of automation — such as improved efficiency and optimized use of employee skills and time — and expands them from individual processes to virtually everything a bank does.

The good news is that some banks have already established centers of excellence for different technologies, like AI and RPA and document processing. But to achieve hyperautomation means establishing a single data platform to fuel all the automation tools. “The center of our hyperautomation strategy is not about providing all the tooling. It’s all about providing the tooling on a single platform with a single data model that is secured,” Saxena said. “Once their workforce is trained on a single platform, all the workflows benefit from all the automation tools. When that happens, things like developer productivity go up 3x or 4x because they’re all working on the same platform and data model so that any work done by one team is quickly accessible by other teams.”

Working with a single data model also provides a foundation for continuous organizational improvement. That’s because a unified platform delivers complete workflow visibility such that bottlenecks, manual work and inefficiencies become apparent and can be addressed. “With a single platform and complete automation toolbox, you can keep your automation healthy, visible and integrated,” Saxena said. “This is where cost savings and speed to market can be improved. A single data model and connected visibility allow for continual improvement end-to-end.”

A workflow transformed

One way to illustrate how hyperautomation can improve the experience of bank employees and the customers they serve is to look at how it works with an everyday workflow such as mortgage lending. While the beginning and end of the process are straightforward, mortgage lending is complex. It involves a large amount of data gathering and analysis, frequent communications and the involvement of many bank employees. Indeed, once a customer applies for a loan, the bank must determine which loan is best, find an available and suitably skilled loan officer and then collect, sort and compare relevant financial data from a variety of sources. All the information collected needs to be tracked and documented so that internal and external auditors can review the entire process.

It is a long process that often frustrates both employees and customers. Hyperautomation can dramatically improve and speed up the loan process. For example, when a customer first applies for a loan, a virtual agent can immediately collect all the relevant data. AI can then analyze the data collected to determine which loan is best, and then orchestration technology can locate the best loan officer to handle the application. Integrations and AI then can connect with the systems bank partners use to collect and compare loan data and orchestration can handle the approval and processing. Because the entire workflow is digitized, tracking and reporting is simple and the digitization allows for predictive analytics and business insights to continually improve the loan process.

This is just one of many workflows a bank can improve by embracing the single platform hyperautomation provides. While hyperautomation allows bank employees to spend their time doing strategic work rather than manual tasks, the real beneficiaries are customers. “People are just expecting things to work, to be fast and to not require tons of follow-up,” Saxena said. “The only way for banks to provide that kind of experience is by focusing on what goes on behind the scenes.”