- Abstract: Like many service industries, the financial industry is largely characterized
by administrative and back-office processes and distinguished by a broad systems
landscape with a high proportion of legacy systems. Missing interfaces between information
systems, user interfaces, or web applications often require many manual
activities. As banks are often functionally organized into traditional departments, a
process-oriented organizational structure is rarely in place. The financial industry
therefore offers enormous potential for the use of robotic process automation (RPA)
and the raising of potential benefits such as process-related cost savings, time reductions,
and quality improvements.
The aim of this chapter is to describe the tremendous opportunities that the use of
RPA technology offers to the financial industry and to explain how these opportunities
can be realized. Therefore, we start by explaining the challenges that progressive digitalization
poses to the industry and how RPA, but also more advanced technologies
(that work not only rule-based but also define own rules), such as artificial intelligence,
can help to overcome them. As well as providing an overview of the various
applications of RPA in the financial industry, we also provide a comprehensive case
study of a relevant practical application