Five takeaways from Process Intelligence for Banking: The Ultimate Guide

As you read this, process intelligence is accelerating drug discovery in Life Sciences. OEMs are using it to slash the time it takes to get a car to market. Retailers are using it to deliver seamless omnichannel experiences. The list is endless.

Which is why, although Process Mining for Dummies is a great resource for learning where the technology came from and the value it’s delivering for businesses, you may still wonder: “So what does Process Intelligence mean for me and my bank?”

So let’s dig into the top five things you’ll learn from Process Intelligence for Banking: The Ultimate Guide.

1. The banking sector is changing, fast

There’s a trifecta of change happening in the banking industry right now. In Customer and Sales, banks are seeing steep rises in consumer expectations, with growing demand for personal, convenient, and consistent experiences — without the wait times. And although banks are working hard to keep up with these expectations, there's clearly more progress to be made, with 74% of today's banking customers saying they’re still not satisfied with their current banking experience.

In Operations, pressure is increasing to modernize banking systems by consolidating systems and tools, reducing manual work, and driving smoother cross-channel experiences. All while embracing new technologies as the payments landscape continues to transform (for example, as T+1 rapidly becomes the settlement standard worldwide, emerging trends like A2A payments and embedded finance continue to take off, and the volume of digital payment transactions looks set to skyrocket.)

In Risk & Compliance, banks are fighting an uphill battle to keep up with evolving threats and changing regulations, which are only getting more complicated. (Did you know, in 2024, regulators hit banks with over $4 billion dollars in fines—mostly due to failures in monitoring transactions?)

Keeping up with all this change is…a lot. Especially if you’re in a traditional bank that’s spent years relying on multiple, disparate systems for different initiatives, and can now barely see how your processes are running beneath the surface, let alone how to improve them.

Free download: Process Intelligence for Banking: The Ultimate Guide

2. Digital transformation isn’t enough

If you work in banking, you’re probably sick of the buzzword by now. But digital transformation isn’t going anywhere — in fact, banks are expected to spend $145.2 billion on it through 2025.

The problem is, with the pace of change accelerating in the industry as it is today, being able to remodel your business and its processes —AKA, run a traditional digital transformation initiative— every time something changes just isn’t possible. Which is why so many transformations underdeliver.

Instead of placing one big bet on yet another long-term program that takes a bank from state A to a “transformed” state B (and potentially blowing your budget), what banks really need is the ability to adapt to change faster, more easily, and more effectively — on a continuous basis.

Watch: Process Intelligence for Banking: Explained

3. The banks that succeed will be the ones that become adaptive

Of the top ten banks across North America and Europe, seven are using Process Intelligence from Celonis to adapt more readily to changing demands and market conditions. If that’s not enough to convince you that process intelligence is a bank’s fast track to a competitive edge, how about the fact that banks who use Celonis have achieved:

• 80% reduction in reporting SLA breaches
• 30% reduction in cycle time for cross-border payments
• 18% increase in payment processing capacity
• 75% decrease in idle time
• $10M+ avoidance of regulatory fines through accelerated reporting
• $11.6M identified in trapped liquidity

Want to see more examples? Download the guide

4. Process Intelligence is an AI force multiplier for banks

Much of the buzz around AI in banking focuses on its role in customer service. But its potential, especially when coupled with Process Intelligence, runs so much deeper.

That’s because AI tools need to understand how a bank works before they can return useful insights. For example — your specific bank’s business rules, the systems necessary for keeping key processes running, and how you define KPIs are all critical inputs that’ll heavily influence the insights and recommendations your AI tools return.

Once AI has that critical process context, the possibilities are endless. For example, Celonis Process Intelligence helps banks use AI to automate identity verification and document validation during customer onboarding, so they can reduce processing times and improve the onboarding experience for new customers. In Operations, Celonis helps banks use AI to automate the matching of payment transactions with ledger entries, so they can reduce discrepancies and streamline reconciliation for faster settlement processes. And in Risk and Compliance, Celonis is helping banks use AI to track and monitor SLA compliance across functions, triggering alerts and suggesting corrective actions for breached SLAs. And those are just three of many ways we're helping banks generate value through AI + PI.

Read the post: How banks can maximize the ROI of AI deployments

5. “Start, grow, innovate”

So where do most banks start with Process Intelligence?

Technically you can start anywhere, and as banking is so broad, we’d strongly suggest you talk to our banking experts before plotting out a potential journey. But as a general rule of thumb, we recommend kicking off with a small, controlled use case that can generate value fast, attract attention from your stakeholders, and then build from there.

In practice, that means starting with a single process with a clear pain point (like the need to improve SLA compliance in a specific area). You could then grow from there by incorporating any processes that link to that initial process, eliminating inefficiencies caused by cross-process interactions. Once you’re through that stage, you’re ready to innovate by expanding your Process Intelligence coverage across entire business functions, unlocking millions in value.