Top 10 Use Cases for Automation in Finance

1. Financial Review Preparation

• Connect and automate data movement from various core banking applications for easy consolidation for executive reporting.
• Cleanse data for easier formatting between applications—like Adobe or Excel—to create readable reports.

2. Account Reconciliation

Not only is this a time-consuming process when done manually, but it also leaves room for error with data re-keying across systems. RPA helps by matching up data with records in disparate systems. Bots can detect duplicate entries, synthesize data stored in different formats across systems, and reconcile accounts accurately.

• Download subaccount balances into pre-approved formats.
• Upload transaction data from various sub-systems and different formats.
• Perform data validation and exception research and handling.
• Create and balance journal entries, noting and remediating discrepancies.

3. Account Creation

Your customers and members don’t have hours to sit while a person manually processes their applications, runs credit checks, and manually sets up access to online banking. That’s where RPA bots help to provide the ideal customer experience. You can set up RPA to process customer information, run checks, and configure the account quickly and easily

4. Standard Journal Entries

• Create standard monthly journal entries.
• Enter and manage data into your ERP.
• Perform validation analytics to ensure accurate entries.

5. Bank Reconciliations

• Automate bank statement download workflows for individual accounts.
• Create text files and store them in appropriate folders.
• Reconcile balance and transactions to core finance sub-systems.
• Create balancing journal entries to handle discrepancies.

6. Intercompany Reconciliation

• Check and reconcile balances on intercompany accounts.
• Conduct basic research and reporting for any exceptions between accounts.
• Create exception files and email reports for review and approvals.

7. Accounts Payable Processing

• Setup and maintain processes for paying different vendors.
• Create workflows for accounts payable approvals.
• Enter data to complete payment preparation and processing.
• Process payments and bulk payment files for sub-system journal entries.

8. Financial Planning and Analysis

• Connect pre-population of forecasts using historical and market data.
• Load balances into planning systems to record.
• Create variance reports that show pre-population and actuals.

9. Operational Finance and Accounting

• Conduct pricing review approval process to handle multiple variations for customer accounts.
• Calculate and process rebates.
• Download detailed monthly sales data and commission calculations.
• Create files and emails to gain approvals.
• Post necessary information to general ledgers and sub-systems.

10. Regulatory Compliance and Reporting

Have audit reports at the ready by employing RPA to pull reports on a regular basis. 

• Pre-populate annual complex reporting and routing
• Capture and manipulate data to support auto-generated regulatory reports.
• Create an audit trail or reports and get confirmation of receipt.
  • BSA/AML audits
  • KYC (Know Your Customer) to collect, screen, and validate customer data
  • CRA (Community Reinvestment Act)

11. Accounts Receivable Processing

• Credit approvals and maintain a customer master file.
• Route and process customer orders.
• Process accounts receivable cash receipts.
• Send late payment notifications.

12. Integration of Legacy and Current Banking Systems

Banks and credit unions are notorious for having a lot of disparate systems, some that integrate and connect with each other and some that don’t. When your bank has multiple databases, core banking systems, and applications, RPA can transfer and migrate data to and from each system, ensuring that data is consistent and correct across the whole organization. And it can execute processes that touch multiple systems in the business.

13. Reporting Wire Transfers

Every bank has to post incoming and outgoing fund transfers to the federal reserve, whether the payment orders are routed and settled. As a manual task, this requires an employee to check Fedline (a branch of the Fedwire Funds Service) for inbound transfers to process and post any outgoing transfers.

RPA can perform the browser automation and data scraping to pull payment information from the core banking system and push it through the Fedwire Funds Service, saving banks time and money and helping them meet SLAs. It can actually replace an expensive monthly service called Fedline Advantage.

14. Fraudulent Activity Monitoring

Since it isn’t practical or possible to have a person watching every single account and tracking activity all day, every day, RPA is a great candidate for account activity tracking. Digital workers can help fraud teams by flagging suspicious activity and notifying the appropriate person.

15. Loan Application Process

Processing loan applications is a multi-step process involving credit, background, and fraud checks, along with processing data across multiple systems. When RPA bots take this over, they process every application the same way, quicker, and with greater accuracy. Then if any information is missing from the application, the RPA bot can send an email notifying the right person.  

16. IT Issue Resolution

As banks and credit unions adopt more technology to better serve customers, the number of IT service desk tickets will also grow. Not only can service desk tickets be resolved quickly and automatically with RPA, but RPA solutions can reduce downtime by fixing problems (like your network) and backing up data to shorten time to resolution.