Banking & Insurance: go further in process automation

For several years, the traditional banking and insurance operators have faced a change in their customers’ expectations and behavior, the arrival of new inputs, the search for cost optimization, an increase in risks and regulatory pressure as well the need to modernize their information systems.

Banks and insurance companies have therefore launched a number of initiatives aimed at improving customer experience and targeting operational excellence, a search in which it was in their interests to rely on the lever of process automation, as they are also being urged to do by the Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority, the ACPR: “Financial institutions will have to find new productivity gains and new customized services by further exploring automation routes” ⁽¹⁾

For more efficient, faster and more secure processes

Automation for more efficient, faster and more secure processes was the theme of the ITESOFT 2019 Symposium , which brought together numerous operators in the field, with talks from study firm Markess by exægis, advisory firms 99 Advisory and CGI, neo-bank Ditto Bank, from Mutavie , Gerap (the EIG between the Mutavie and Maaf Vie insurance companies) and Bred.

Improving the customer experience remains a priority in order to attract new customers, while increasing the revenues from existing customers. Within this objective, simplification of the customer process, improvement of quality of service and improvement of customer satisfaction represent the main three challenges for financial institutions⁽²⁾. However, how many times does a customer say that they are satisfied with the smoothness and simplicity of the interface offered by their bank or insurance company to then become disillusioned at the end of the process when they discover the length of the lead times for processing their request…

In fact, most of the time, only part of the issue has been dealt with by focusing on digitization of customer processes rather than on digitization of the processes as a whole: those that make it possible to deliver the product or service to the customer. Result: there are still a number of processes that are manual to varying extents, not necessarily formalized or “industrialized”, partly digitized, with defective connections between front-office and back-office, sources of a lot of friction for both employees and end customer and, ultimately, of inefficiency...

Automation for offering an improved customer experience and aiming for operational excellence

By transferring time-consuming processes that lack added value to the machine, by orchestrating interactions between people, computer applications and data, automation will make it possible to optimize all of these operating processes in order to be capable of offering an improved customer experience and aim for operational excellence.

As stated at a round table discussion by Laurent Hassan, Senior Manager at 99 Advisory : “Automation supports the experiences of prospective customers, existing customers and employee. It has to be capable of connecting the processes that have been digitized” .

“The gains [from automation] are both qualitative and quantitative, added Stéphane Houin, Advisory Manager & Manager of Digital XP offers at CGI . By removing tasks that offer no added value, these technologies make it possible to reposition the employee on their main work and their expertise and to free up time to improve customer proximity. They also guarantee faultless traceability. Externally, they allow smoother interactions with customers.” For Sébastien Poiblanc, Manager of Customer Relations & Management at Mutavie, in insurance, “automation is an ongoing struggle and must provide productivity gains. The challenge is also to transfer [to the machine] the human tasks with little added value to [allow employees] to concentrate on those with added value, such as the customer relationship”. In banking, “automation is very important for the traditional operators just as it is for neo-banks, but not for the same reasons , explained Cécile Chahid-Nouraï , Secretary General of Ditto Bank and a former back-office manager of a retail bank. While it allows traditional banks to optimize their costs , it offers neo-banks the capacity to guarantee scalability “ .

End-to-end digitization of processes

Document and data capture, verification of completeness and compliance of documents, fraud detection, approval circuits, confirmation of agreements with electronic signature, notifications, links to business applications (via API or RPA)… are “elementary components”, which, once they have been combined and orchestrated, will make it possible to automate a business process end-to-end (from front-office to back-office) in order to deliver the best service to a customer within the best lead times by mobilizing resources in the best possible way while guaranteeing management and traceability of the operations.

By relying on the technologies of ITESOFT solutions; customer case processing such as account opening, credit and loans granting, contract lifecycle and claims are all banking and insurance processes that are going to be able to be automated in order to deliver the best possible customer experience while aiming for operational excellence.

Gerap and Bred examples

100% of incoming streams from insured parties processed by Gerap (in other words, all documents sent by letter, email or via portals) has been digitized for twenty years now, recalled Michel Parizot, its Manager. The GIE has implemented ITESOFT capture technologies to do this. For its customers, it then relied on ITESOFT technologies to automate several processes with benefits in terms of “security, quality of service and traceability.”

As explained by Jérémy Marsegan, Information System Architect, the Bred implemented the ITESOFT solution built on its BPM engine; “fifteen years ago to automate all its customer complaints processes.” Based on the results obtained and “user satisfaction”, the bank has extended its scope of use. No less than 150 processes, around thirty of which are related to ”core-banking” , now rely on this “ITESOFT solution.”