• Roman Davydov, Technology Observer at Itransition


• 14.08.2025 10:00 am
#ProcessAutomation #BankingTechnology

The banking sector has always been at the forefront of technological innovations, and when robotic process automation (RPA) gained traction in the late 2010s, banks were among the first who implemented it. Aiming to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, they were deploying software robots that mimic human actions to automate clerical, rule-based tasks, ranging from extracting data from invoices to setting up employee accounts in corporate systems.

Today, the use of RPA technology in banking extends beyond traditional rule-based automation. An increasing number of banks are exploring intelligent process automation (IPA) by integrating natural language processing, optical character recognition, machine learning, and other AI technologies in their automation workflows to streamline more complex processes and leverage more impactful efficiency gains.

In this article, RPA experts from Itransition examine the concept of intelligent process automation, explain how it shapes the modern banking sector, and provide a brief guide on how to get started with IPA.

What is intelligent process automation, and why banks implement it

Intelligent process automation involves the combination of RPA and AI technologies to automate and optimize workflows. Unlike traditional RPA bots, which can only manage structured datasets and work based on strictly predefined rules, intelligent AI-enabled bots can process structured, semi-structured, and unstructured types of data, identify patterns in it, and even make data-based decisions. This allows them to handle a broader range of tasks, including those requiring human-like cognitive abilities. 

Given the above, IPA implementation can bring a banking organization numerous improvements:

• Enhanced employee morale and productivity

Many employees in the banking sector feel overwhelmed and frustrated with time-consuming administrative tasks, which drains their morale and decreases productivity. Since IPA can handle a broader range of clerical activities compared to RPA, it can help banks further reduce the impact of repetitive tasks on employees.

• Reduced business costs

Because IPA can automate a wide range of back-office and front-office operations, the technology can help a bank reduce the need for additional staff, thus cutting labor expenses and overall business costs. For example, a bank that deploys intelligent chatbots to handle the most straightforward  customer support tasks can have smaller support agent teams.

• Advanced technological and business flexibility

As already mentioned, intelligent AI-enabled bots can learn from data and make decisions based on it, so unlike rule-based RPA bots, they can adapt to changes in processes without reprogramming. Therefore, IPA can enable a banking business to become more flexible from both technological and business perspectives.

How banks are currently using intelligent process automation

Today, there are plenty of cases showcasing the transformative effect of IPA on banking front-office and back-office operations. Here are three notable real-life examples:

1. Streamlining payment processing

Ernst & Young, a UK-based firm providing investment banking, wealth management, and other financial services, receives nearly 1.5 million payments from its clients yearly. 70% of these payments needed to be matched to the accompanying invoices, cleared, and closed manually, which burdened the firm's accounts receivable team. The company applied intelligent process automation for this task, with bots matching and clearing most of the incoming customer payments without human involvement. Now, only 5% of payments need to be manually processed, which helps Ernst & Young save almost 230,000 work hours yearly.

2. Enhancing customer interactions

ABN AMRO Bank, a major bank operating in the Netherlands, serves over 5 million retail customers and 365,000 commercial customers worldwide. Providing efficient and personalized customer service to each of them proved to be challenging, despite the use of several chatbots, since they could not handle complex customer queries. The bank decided to deploy an AI-powered chatbot infrastructure that encompasses bots capable of more advanced language recognition. As a result, ABN AMRO Bank managed to increase the accuracy rate in intent recognition by 7% for the Dutch language, which enabled the bank to provide better service to customers.

3. Accelerating software testing and delivery

State Street, a US-based financial services and banking company, had to run thousands of tests annually to test its native app. Creating test cases was a recurring manual task, with each case taking an average of 12 minutes of testers' time. Since both teams and management considered manual testing inefficient, the company decided to automate the process. The company was able to automate this task by deploying AI-enabled bots that generate test cases in just 4 minutes. 

How to start with intelligent process automation

Typically, successful IPA projects in banks begin with small pilot projects to showcase IPA's feasibility to stakeholders and lay the foundation for enterprise-scale technology adoption. For a bank just starting its intelligent process automation journey, we recommend using the following algorithm:

• Conduct business process analysis

To begin with, a team running a pilot project should map the bank's business processes using techniques such as process mining to identify one or two potential IPA use cases, i.e., processes to be improved.

• Create a new process flow

After business process analysis and IPA platform vendor selection (UiPath, Microsoft Power Automate, and Automation Anywhere are the leading vendors on the market), the team should model new process flows to remove ineffectiveness that were identified previously. 

• Develop AI-enabled bots 

Then, the team should design and build bots to execute the remodelled processes and integrate AI in these new process flows.

• Test the automated processes

After that, the team should test new process flows in various scenarios to ensure that new processes function correctly and align with the bank's defined business requirements and goals.

• Implement an IPA solution

If the pilot project is considered successful, the team can proceed with full-fledged implementation of an IPA solution that adheres to the bank's strategic vision.

Final thoughts 

Every banking organization today is striving to maximize its operational efficiency and reduce operational costs. Intelligent process automation technology, which can be applicable to a wide range of tasks, can help you achieve these business goals and succeed in the modern banking landscape.

To ensure that your IPA implementation goes smoothly and maximize the ROI of your investment, we also recommend hiring third-party RPA experts to join your project. If needed, they can help you build Proof of Concept to prove the viability of IPA and, if its benefits are recognized, implement a full-scale IPA solution.