Robotic Process Automation in Banking: How to eliminate manual workflows and reduce costs

RPA in Banking

Customers expect lightning-fast, hassle-free financial services with minimal interaction and certainly no repeat requests for information. Greater efficiency and accuracy in banking operations is also demanded by regulatory pressures that continue to rise, along with the evolving risks of fraud and financial crime.

Digital transformation is key for banks to meet these expectations and –
as Celonis’ Banking Industry Principal, Joaquim Nogueira, wrote in his recent digest of the banking transformation landscape – transformation should be a continuous activity of increasing operational efficiency and improving the customer experience.

One way to enable continuous transformation and improvement is by identifying processes to streamline and optimize through banking automation. Celonis has seen automation recently help a global bank identify $11.6M in trapped liquidity, for example.

Offloading lower-value tasks can also slash the manual workloads that stack up for banking teams, enabling greater responsiveness and agility. Time is also freed up for higher-value activities like strategic planning to get ahead of changing regulations. Or that time can be reinvested in improving customer service in processes such as credit card applications, where 61% of bank staff blame poor experiences on handling a large volume of manual applications.

So let me introduce you to the hero of our tale: the humble robot.

What is RPA and why should you bank on bots to improve manual processes?

Bots have been somewhat overshadowed in the world of automation by the show-stealing turns of artificial intelligence and agentic solutions. But there’s a lot to be said for Robotic Process Automation (RPA), where the reins of standardized, repetitive, routine tasks and activities are handed over to specialized software robots.

An RPA bot isn't autonomous like an AI agent, so you can’t entrust it with making complex banking process decisions. However, RPA bots are ideal workhorses for the kinds of high-volume but low-value, repetitive tasks that can steal banking teams’ time and cause bottlenecks. All RPA bots need is a consistent, predictable, structured set of steps to follow.

Think of a rules-based process like account opening and application approval. RPA automation can cover the basic transfer of customer information from applications to business systems. It can also use customer data from users’ applications to calculate the risk threshold (their likelihood of keeping up with repayments, for example) and cross-reference it against the bank’s predetermined acceptance criteria. Even if a bank doesn’t entrust sole responsibility for its credit approval process to an RPA bot, this kind of initial check can significantly cut down the workload for human banking professionals.

RPA can therefore be a great entry point into more advanced business process automation, or a ‘quick win’ that tests out the benefits for a bank’s operations. RPA can kickstart a financial institution’s path to value, joining the 55% of business leaders who are using automation to cut costs and resource requirements over the next 12 months, according to our 2025 Process Optimization Report.

How Process Intelligence supports RPA in banking

If you want to establish which processes would benefit from RPA automation, you need the fundamental visibility to see how they’re actually running. Financial institutions can use Process Intelligence to gain that live, end-to-end transparency.

Process Intelligence surfaces insights into process conformance, KPIs, and workflow analytics, so businesses can pinpoint any manual steps that could be automated with RPA technology. By consolidating data throughout the banking organization, Process Intelligence gives RPA bots reliable, accurate, and seamless access to the business information they need to perform their operations. And after RPA implementation, banking companies can use Process Intelligence to monitor process performance as part of continuous digital transformation.

One German universal bank exemplifies how Process Intelligence helps clearly visualize RPA’s opportunities and impact within a business. The bank’s teams knew the automation rate in some parts of the business wasn’t optimal, but Process Intelligence enabled it to objectively understand exactly how much time was going to waste. The bank increased buy-in from its teams by sharing this insight, along with a modeled view of the improvements that would be made by automating the manual processes.

Using Process Intelligence, banks can activate and control RPA bots with Celonis Action Flows. Bringing these tools together allows you to trigger RPA bots using real-time insights from across the business, making them hyper-responsive to changes and events across the process landscape. When banks configure, schedule, and use RPAs with Action Flows, they can automate multiple process steps, each performed by RPA bots, within a single workflow – without the need for manual activation.

Let’s take a look at some examples of manual banking processes that have RPA’s name on them.

RPA use cases in banking

Implement RPA to eliminate manual workflows from your banking operations and you’ll soon hear the “ka-ching” of cost savings. With RPA bots motoring through the administrative grunt work, employees become more productive as they’re able to handle customer queries more efficiently and invest more attention where it’s truly valued. RPA also boosts employee satisfaction on top of operational efficiency, as banking teams can spend their time on more rewarding, impactful activities than mundane tasks and back-office processes.

Here are some great places for any business in the banking sector to start with introducing RPA processes:

Regulatory compliance

RPA can help your banking organization keep pace with the constant flurry of regulatory change – from both internal and external policies – as bots can be programmed to automatically apply legislation updates to processes. This makes it easier to submit regulatory reports on time, while reducing the risk of fines from failed regulatory steps.

Fraud detection

RPA implementation can also support another business-critical challenge for banking firms by lowering vulnerability to fraudulent financial activities. An RPA bot can screen and process high volumes of transactions, in real time, more efficiently than human workforces and with fewer resources.

Customer screening

Just as RPA processes can screen transactions, a financial institution can also use the technology to reduce manual touches on customer checks. Deploying RPA in your credit approval process can reduce customer screening costs and customer service wait times. At Celonis, we’ve helped one of the largest European universal banks process credit applications four times faster, and open 98% of bank accounts on time, courtesy of process automation.

Trade operations

Automating payment processes with RPA can improve the accuracy and punctuality of transactions, while accelerating cash flow in the business. One global investment bank used process automation to cut manual touch points in trade by 35%, reducing both cycle time and the effort to support trade operations. Additionally, an African bank automated payment releases for outward cross-border payments, increasing its payment processing capacity by 18% and reducing cycle time by more than 30%.

Account reconciliation

RPA bots can match transactions using data from your business systems, flagging exceptions for human review so fewer payment discrepancies are lost. This automation saved one Celonis banking customer 25,000 hours of manual document reconciliation.

Transaction processing

To prevent the risk of duplicate transactions, RPA bots can be used to monitor versions of the same transaction across your payment processing systems. This can reduce leakage, minimize amendments, and avoid reconciliations.

This varied sample of opportunities gives you a sense of the RPA payday of business value on offer. Explore more about the role of automation and AI in banking here, or check out our guide to learn more about how Process Intelligence is enabling truly adaptive banking.