Top Buzzwords in Banking and What They Mean to Community Institutions (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this blog, we examined some of the industry buzzwords being discussed and what they mean to community-based financial institutions. Brady Chianciola, PRI consultant, emphasizes that buzzworthy concepts should be considered in the context of the FI’s overall business and profitability strategy.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA mimics the tasks that have been done by humans in the past. For example, RPA can open websites, pull information and input into other applications, open, write and send emails. RPA can significantly improve the FI’s workflows by performing in seconds the same tasks that take minutes to accomplish manually. While freeing up “just 10 minutes” may not seem like a big impact for one task, the repetition of that task daily, weekly and monthly adds up and can free up more time for an employee to complete more important work.

“As bank profitability is being threatened by increased competition, FIs need to operate as efficiently as possible,” Chianciola said. “RPA is an opportunity to do that while simultaneously improving the client experience through enhanced customer-facing and back-office automation.”

Non-Documentary Identification Verification (NIV). NIV enhances processes such as online account opening by digitally verifying a customer’s identity utilizing online data sources while reducing human intervention. NIV is a significant improvement in the onboarding process, allowing up to 100 percent of online applications to automatically be approved in seconds while requiring no human intervention at all.

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). ESB helps FIs run more efficiently on the IT side by connecting the various applications that receive information to a seamless, single point of communication versus a spiderweb-like network. Also known as middleware, this IT architectural pattern allows for FIs to easily change out solutions with reduced workload in code development by the IT division. This improves go-to-market timelines, thus improving the client experience.

“Efficiency is so important in today’s FI environment,” Chianciola said. “These concepts are buzzworthy because they help the FI become more efficient and ultimately more profitable and competitive.”

Profit Resources specializes in identifying profitability improvement areas for financial institutions through revenue growth, cost control, streamlining processes, and effective use of technology. Contact us to learn more about our personalized approach to propel growth and improve profitability.