2021 proved to be a landmark year for the financial services automation sector as banks employed robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to drive major technology overhauls.

Following is a look at the most popular Bank Automation News automation stories of 2021:

No. 5: Yearend Libor phaseout to require automation

Libor, the internationally adopted benchmark for calculating lending and currency exchange rates, is set to expire, and institutions are expected to comply with the phaseout by yearend. In turn, U.S. banks have turned to automation to address the challenges, and most global banks have set aside a budget of around $100 million for the Libor phaseout, according to global accounting firm EY.

Chatbots, virtual agents, signature verification and other automation strategies all play a part in the Libor phaseout, Ronak Doshi, vice president at IT analytics firm Everest Group, told BAN. Though interbank negotiations will require a human perspective, automation will undoubtedly be a major factor in converting vast pools of financial data to new standard lending rates in 2022.

No. 4: Strategic automation is key to tech success, says PNC Bank CIO Krishnan

IT acronyms are merely jargon if they don’t link to a concrete strategy, Ganesh Krishnan, PNC Bank’s enterprise chief information officer, said during April’s Bank Automation Ignite virtual conference.

The $553.5 billion PNC in 2013 started deploying RPA and ML automation tools as part of the bank’s overall strategy, and as a result increased operational efficiencies, accelerated cycle time and enhanced customer experience, Ganesh said at the conference. He shared how organizations can learn to incorporate automation strategies into their front- and back-end banking processes methodically.

“Until organizations make it a strategic priority, put focus on it and invest in it, you’re not going to be able to make a dent into that monolithic manual process,” Krishnan said.

No. 3: How to assess value in RPA

The most important factor in determining RPA effectiveness is total time savings for employees. Banks in the process of implementing or assessing RPA quality, though, should also lean on other strategies, said Anoop Gala, head of financial services at digital product provider Orion Innovation.

Companies that focus on low-level key performance indicators will struggle to scale or understand the value of their RPA efforts, Gala said. “We should be looking at automation in a more holistic way. It’s not just about how many bots you created, but it is about automation creating a competitive advantage for you as an enterprise and for your clients.”

Gala explained how banks and financial services companies should measure RPA effectiveness.

No. 2: An inside look at Scotiabank’s AI automation expansion

Scotiabank expanded its automation integration to cover a wide swath of business activities, including back-office marketing, enhanced security measures and improved call center quality.

The bank also built AIDOX, a tool for automating legal contract analysis that cuts down contract review time to 15 minutes from 1.5 hours, development lead Pablo Vidales Calderon said. The process, which was developed on a Python framework, is two parts: semantic verification and economic specifications. This helps AIDOX perform complex verbal and numerical analysis, with the bank expecting to save $1.7 million annually in legal contract analysis fees.

No. 1: The evolution of Wells Fargo’s automation strategy

Attended bots helped lead $1.96 trillion Wells Fargo’s automation strategy in 2021. The San Francisco-based bank started with unattended bots but found attended bots offered a better return on investment (ROI), especially for customer-facing employees, Wells Fargo Enterprise Robotics and Automation Leader Paul Krauss told BAN.

“I’ve got thousands of contact center representatives; if I could put bots in place that could simplify things for them — signing out, transferring calls, things that shorten average handle time — now I can impact tens of thousands of people at a time, rather than one,” he said.

Bank Automation Summit, taking place March 1-2 in Charlotte, N.C., is the first and only event to focus solely on automation in banking. The event will feature the brightest minds from across financial services on intelligent automation strategies and deployment. Learn more and register for Bank Automation Summit 2022.