This week, the European Banking Authority issued a report identifying key drivers that are transforming the payments landscape in Europe. How financial institutions are engaging with fintech and other emerging technologies was an area of focus in the report and robotic process automation was one of the technologies highlighted.
The EBA Report on the Impact of Fintech on Payment Institutions’ and E-Money Institutions’ Business Models found European banks are actively developing and using RPA for various repetitive manual tasks. Additionally, the report identified several technologies underlying RPA—including natural-language processing and optical character recognition—that are assisting the automation of client onboarding or KYC.
“All institutions may need to consider near-term transformation to secure their positions in the value chain, which keeps changing, partly because of FinTech developments,” the report’s authors wrote. “Customers’ behavior and needs keep changing and cannot be easily predicted, forcing institutions to be flexible and agile to adapt easily rather than to employ long-term strategies. Other, more technologically advanced, industries may be a source of inspiration as well as anticipation of customer expectations.”