by
June 24, 2022
Banking relies on paperwork, producing millions of documents daily. With challenges like process standardization, categorical data storage, & validation…it requires a solution with a fast track and secure approach. Know how IDP can help transform document processing in banking…
“Banks have to upgrade themselves, or risk being burnt to the ground”.
-JP Nicols (Co-founder, Alloys Lab Alliance)
It's no mystery that the banking sector now faces a huge document processing crisis. From a simple request of account opening to mortgage sanctions, there are millions and zillions of documents that have to be meticulously stored & verified.
While there are document management solutions for banking with capabilities to standardize the process, they mostly can’t extract & process the data at required speed. Also, these solutions need manual intervention at multiple steps.
Therefore, to get you upto speed, we have written this article about intelligent document processing in banks. So read ahead…
Do you know that 92% of the world’s top 100 banks are still relying on legacy systems for processing data. This essentially means that the banking industry has been slow to embrace new technologies such as AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), NLP (natural language processing), etc to fasten up their services and improve customer service
While there are numerous challenges associated with processing bank documents, a few critical ones include large volumes of documents that are produced rapidly. It is often accompanied by difficult and cumbersome processing operations. Also, the solutions so provided are often ad-hoc in nature that can break anytime in the future.
Other roadblocks that come up while processing banking documents include issues such as long wait lines because of manual processing, verification errors, and wastage of resources. This is accompanied by legacy IT infrastructure that is inflexible and often hard to circumvent.
Simply put, Intelligent Document Processing is a disruptive tech in the document processing space. In essence, it is more than an OCR that can take care of the entire automation process from extraction to verification. Some people also define it as a collaboration of different smart techs such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision.
Leveraging an IDP platform in banking institutions solve operational problems such as-
With the ability to read and understand data in context due to the support of AI, including Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML), IDP is a practical assistant for banks to take advantage of core data to collect and research customer insights. As a result, banks can build a complete ecosystem and provide comprehensive services tailored to customers’ demands.
IDP can automatically collect customer information and integrate NLP and ML to dig deep and extract valuable information such as behavior, consumption, habits, etc., from the data, providing a complete picture of customers.
It can even store and integrate customer data into the internal system, allowing the bank to use this data to develop strategies for improving products/services suitable for targeting users.
Compliance issues are sometimes hard to achieve with the high document volumes. Banks have to comply with many regulations and go through a series of processes to check and authenticate numerous documents and papers. One of them is the Anti-Money Laundering regulation, relating to the Know Your Customer (KYC) process, requiring banks to verify customer identity and monitor risks to limit fraud. However, as these processes are often performed manually, they tend to be time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient.
The responsibility for compliance with thousands of KYC rests with the banks. However, fines and penalties for non-compliance can be imposed, causing financial losses for the banks. According to a report from AI Business, more than $450 billion worth of penalties for non-compliance has been issued against various banks.
Leveraging an IDP platform can thus help banks have a visual picture of their customers, thereby improving compliance with strict KYC regulations. An IDP can aid banks say goodbye to their painful KYC experiences as it is capable of extracting relevant data from all kinds of documents, including birth certificates, social security cards, driver’s licenses, and passports, scanning customer information such as name, date of birth, and address, and integrating it into the KYC process. This eliminates the manual collection of customer documents, making the KYC process more transparent, efficient, and error-free.
IDP can combine with AI technology and algorithms to compare and validate customer information, account statements, and cash books to detect suspicious transactions or activities.
IDP ensures that you don’t have to extract and save machine-generated text or scanned documents from other sources.
IDP helps to free knowledge workers who had to manually and immediately process bank forms. This is especially true where employees were required to indulge in continuous management and auditing of several documents to maintain the quality of their work.
IDP ensures compliance in the banking and finance sector. Advances in digital transformations have opened up new opportunities for banks to store banking documents more efficiently.
Some benefits include of an IDP platform for the banking industry include-
* Elimination of human-introduced errors 
* Categorical storage of documents in an automated way 
* Uncovering important patterns in customer relationship management 
* Reducing fraudulent transactions 
* Enhanced risk-profiling 
Lastly, implementing an IDP solution helps reduce cost and save time, with the added benefit of producing more happy customers.
The ability to enable anywhere, real-time customer experiences for any type of banking need is the critical benchmark for banking firms. Customers expect the ability to initiate and manage their banking relationships with the same level of capability as a branch visit, but without the hassle.
A state of the art IDP platform can aid banking firms meet this high expectation of customers while taking care of paper heavy processes involving important documents such as cheques, IDs etc. It can also help banks avoid other potential headaches that can arise via large volumes of unstructured and uncategorized documents.
Some use cases of an IDP platform in the banking sector include-
It is an initial onboarding task for any bank and might include details about certain instances like customer entity, geography, services, transactions, etc. Leveraging an IDP solution here can help banks extract the relevant pieces of information from documents such as the social security number, a valid government-issued photo ID such as driver’s license, passport, etc.
Fannie Mae predicts a mortgage origination of USD 2.47 trillion for 2022. Last year, this figure was close to USD 2.72 trillion. Even with a slight dip, the market shows enormous opportunity for the banks. On the contrary, it also means a heavy volume of mortgage documents demands quick processing of papers, which in turn requires the banks to adopt IDP on a priority basis.
Cheques are still one of the most common modes of payment in banks. Processing them on a day to day basis still involves a dedicated team of employees who verify and extract the required information manually. Adopting an IDP platform to automate this entire process can aid banks reduce the turnaround time, make the customer happier and increase staff productivity.
Loan application processing requires intensive and time-consuming extraction of document data. Automatic processing of application forms using IDP improves data output accuracy and speeds up equipment processing.
It helps process documents after loan termination, generates customer risk profiles and risk assessments through KYC, and allows paper-based data to be sent to fraud detection engines with Artificial Intelligence algorithms. It further helps in processing financial product applications and billing forms for various products to speed up device processing. Additionally and IDP platform also aids banks to automate their account closure processes. It also helps them help extract data from annual reports that can help banks create research based reports.
The implementation of IDP requires banks to:
VisionERA is an automated smart document processing platform. It is an end to end automation solution for any industry that heavily relies on document processing. The platform offers end-to-end integration with customized document data extraction & DIY workflows. VisionERA takes a three pronged approach of- Decode, Decipher, & Decide.
VisionERA’s decode capabilities can help banks classify messy and unstructured documents that come in from various sources on a regular basis. From unlocking emails to reading PDFs, we leverage ML and computer technology to automatically segregate the critical data.
We can help banks decipher valuable insights from the data that lies buried within the documents via capabilities like NLP. Our one a kind triangulation logic aid banks enhance data validation.
VisionERA can aid banks improve and maximize their process throughput with unimaginable speed and accuracy. We are easily integratable with any upstream or downstream process using APIs and help banks take actionable decisions on the data so generated.
Loaded with an array of features like proprietary AI technology with zero third party dependency to being powerful and flexible we have it all. VisionERA comes with a unique feature that can help banks create an effective bucketization of feedback files for reducing cognitive overloads. Equipped with an industry beating table detection mechanism, auto-gridlining, and supported by an active continuous feedback learning mechanism, we have it all.
Indeed, it's high time for the banking industry to invest in newer technologies such as IDP for improving their services and turning their clients into happier customers. Bidding goodbye to legacy and manual ways of processing humongous amounts of data can help the banking industry amp up their game. Doing so can help them unlock a whole treasure trove of opportunities, particularly as traditional banks battle with challenger banks.
Note: Want to amplify your limits by adopting intelligent document processing for your bank? The answer is here. Get your hands on ‘VisionERA’ IDP for just $0. To read the terms and conditions, click on the link here.
Want to try VisionERA by yourself? Here is the link to our free trial.
To get a proper walkthrough of VisionERA via our automation experts, simply schedule a demo with us!