Accern, a New York-based fintech that develops low-code and no-code tools for financial institutions, is building out a marketplace of use-case templates that make it possible for bankers without engineering experience to deploy AI and automation software.

The marketplace consists of more than 400 use cases with Accern teeing up educational content and additional pre-packaged templates focused on smart extraction and document analysis, Chief Technology Officer Anshul Pandey told Bank Automation News.

Accern, founded in 2014, has raised $19 million over four rounds, according to Crunchbase, and provides low-code AI tools to companies including Standard Chartered, Raiffeisen Bank, Moody’s and Jefferies. The fintech is prioritizing the expansion of its marketplace this year as it identifies use cases for automation and low-code tools and pre-packages them for anyone, even users without knowledge of data science, Pandey said. The marketplace soft-launched with a few customers at the end of 2020.

Most of Accern’s low-code use-case templates support operations and processes around data analysis, improved loan decisioning and identifying operating efficiencies. Any team that consumes information via text and documents can automate analysis with Accern’s tools, Pandey said. Most bank users are within their FI’s innovation teams but the automation trend is expanding throughout most bank operations.

In addition to optical character recognition, and pulling and structuring data from databases and data warehouses, Accern is developing capabilities around forecasting and machine learning for sentiment analysis, Pandey said. This allows the fintech to provide tools that take raw data to convert into actionable insights.

“We have solved the technical problem already, which is around: How can you connect to different data sets? What kind of models can you use? How can you ensure the user’s existing workflow doesn’t break? We’re now trying to educate our customers to see what kinds of various use cases they can automate, what are the different functions they can do in their day-to-day jobs and how low-code tools can help with their existing tasks,” Pandey said.

Accern will add client use cases and testimonials for many of its offerings in the coming months as a way to push its educational agenda.

Low-code and no-code automation tools that allow individual employees without strong technology and software backgrounds to automate aspects of their daily workflows have been growing in popularity among banks. JPMorgan Chase, for instance, is looking to beef up its usage of low-code automation within its asset and wealth management division, and Wells Fargo is experimenting with workstation automation within its treasury management department.

According to Pandey, 2020 was an inflection point for low-code AI tools in financial services, from the vantage point of Accern, which utilizes consumption-based pricing. Contract values for some of the company’s FI customers increased 300% to 400% compared with 2019 rates, Pandey said.