How intelligent finance automation tools build better customer relationships in financial services

Technological advancement and an influx of Millennial and Gen Z consumers with high expectations for digital services are completely transforming the financial services industry. On one hand, consumers are experiencing the convenience of digital services in every area of their lives and want the same conveniences from the finance sector. At the same time, large legacy institutions are implementing more innovative technology to keep up with demand and compete with new, tech-first startups rapidly taking over the market.

Intelligent automation tools are already well known for improving efficiency and cutting costs, but they play a role in customer satisfaction as well. As the growing popularity of new fintech startups show, cutting-edge technology is synonymous with market buzz and customer growth.

What do customers want from financial services now?

The financial services landscape looks very different now than it did in the last decade, let alone a whole generation ago. Looking at trends in banking, lending, and other personal finance sectors, it’s clear that consumers want these:

More convenience

Across the board of financial services, from banking to lending and beyond, consumers are opting primarily for convenient, online transactions through the web or mobile apps. 

A survey by Insider Intelligence found a significant 78% of Millennials never want to go to a physical bank branch if they can avoid it. With Millennials and Gen Z consumers now becoming banks’ largest consumer groups, it makes sense that foot traffic at banks has decreased by 10% to 20% in recent years.

Faster processing times

A new generation of tech-first insurance providers are making headlines with their quick approval times. Bank customers want their money transfers to go through instantly. In every sector of the financial services industry, customers seek faster approval times and processes to keep up with the pace of their lives.

More transparency

Since technology hasn’t enabled instantaneous processes just yet, many customers want to know the real-time status of applications or transactions they’re waiting on — without needing to make a phone call. Customers appreciate being able to log on to an app to see the status of a bank transfer, whether or not an insurance application has been approved, and where a claim is in the review process.

Intelligent automation tools to the rescue

Digital convenience, fast transactions, and real-time data transparency aren’t possible without streamlining back-end processes with AI. The latest generations of intelligent automation tools completely transform workflows with these features:

Streamlined data capture with OCR

AI can eliminate data entry by reading, categorizing, and extracting information from documents with minimal or no human review. This can reduce new customer intake, claim review, and other document-based processes to just minutes, or even seconds, compared to the slow speed of manual review.

OCR (optical character recognition) is the technology that can read text within documents the same way humans do. However, unlike humans, OCR can recognize characters, numbers, letters, and words — in any font or language.

As you might expect, the most significant impact of OCR is on manual data entry tasks. OCR speeds up this essential business process and makes it convenient to turn words from scanned PDFs or images into text that can be edited or copied without manual retyping.

Even with the limitations of legacy OCR technology, it can help organizations streamline the digitalization of structured documents. According to performance benchmarks, Automation Hero’s patent-pending Context-aware OCR is 68% more accurate than ABBY’s Flexicapture and delivers 281% greater accuracy in terms of handwriting recognition.

Natural language processing (NLP)

A field within AI called Natural Language Processing can actually analyze sentences to detect their intent. This makes it easy for AI to contextualize customer requests and automatically respond to them with pre-generated emails — faster than a human ever could. AI can even handle basic support requests, such as updating contact information or even canceling an insurance policy.

Automated data structuring

The vast majority of data that financial service providers collect from their customers is unstructured and unusable until it’s been properly processed. Common examples of unstructured data includes PDFs of financial records or scans of handwritten documents but also extends to email messages and social media posts. With the right training from users, AI can automatically extract useful information from these sources and categorize it. Data analysts can then use this to help develop customized products or inform sales and marketing strategy.

Intelligent document processing (IDP)

Intelligent document processing has emerged as a crucial element within the wider automation landscape. IDP was born out of the need for organizations to accurately extract data from documents. In essence, IDP leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to effectively handle and oversee document-centric business processes. Through the adoption of IDP, banking institutions can optimize heritage processes involving a large volume of documents to reduce manual effort, enhance precision, and reach their digital transformation goals.

A notable advantage of IDP is its seamless integration capability with other automation tools like robotic process automation (RPA). This compatibility with existing technologies enables companies to enhance their current automation strategies, leading to improved overall efficiency and expanded operational scope.

Conclusion

The future of financial services is to become technology-first. Already, companies are using intelligent automation tools, such as Automation Hero, to streamline their processes and improve profitability. Now, it’s imperative to use these tools to improve customer satisfaction and increase market share. Experience the benefits of these tools in your own company by getting started with Automation Hero today.

Unlock the intelligence in your documents with our AI-driven automation today

Learn how we helped Markerstudy reduce its claims processing time by 40%. Additionally, learn how we reduced total claim processing time by 80% for another multinational insurance partner — cutting down manual tasks from 10 minutes to just two minutes per claim.

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