The Great Resignation and Growing Importance of Automation in Fintech

Like other industries, the fintech industry is also facing challenges with hiring and retaining talent. In this article, Jackie Siqueiros, head of people, Ocrolus, discusses how automation can help in this situation.

In the current business environment, where the challenge of finding and retaining employees for repetitive manual data entry roles has paralyzed some companies, many are turning to robots to compete. This is occurring in industries in the midst of a digital transformation, with finance one of the most affected. It led one financial organization CEO to sayOpens a new window that, “Never in my 40 plus years in banking have I seen labor shortages at the level they’re at now.”

Vacancies are at a ten-year highOpens a new window in the United States. Companies across industries are simply finding it difficult to meet their staffing needs in the current business landscape. Along with more specialist roles, companies also have trouble filling the more entry-level and repetitive data entry roles. While specialist roles are difficult to replace, rote data entry can easily be pushed to robots, and many companies are doing just that with great success.

In the financial industry specifically, proactive organizations have integrated robotic process automation and other AI-driven technologies to plug a range of operational role gaps.

The Current Talent Shortage Is a Full-blown Global Recruitment Crisis

Getting back to full productivity has been a huge challenge for many organizations. According to a Manpower survey, 69% of American companiesOpens a new window face significant hiring challenges. In the UKOpens a new window , “employers are facing the most severe shortage of job candidates on record”, and according to BloombergOpens a new window , the EU’s staffing shortage is set to be worse than the US’s.

The most worrying aspect of the global hiring problem is that it is only going to get worse. According to a report by Korn FerryOpens a new window , by 2030, there could be 85 million global vacancies for much-needed roles, amounting to $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenues.

See More: Year 2022: Embracing the Wave of Automation

Rising To the Recruitment Challenge With Smart Robotic Solutions

The pandemic accelerated the shift to automation across industries. For example, many banks and other financial service providers moved onboarding and common query services almost exclusively online using smart AI chatbots. Manufacturing and retail have also turned to robots. According to the Financial TimesOpens a new window , “Warehouses are expected to invest $36bn in automation this year, up 20% in 2020.”

Traditionally, important yet repetitive and rote tasks such as manual data entry, document onboarding, and other time-consuming administrative work have been given to entry-level workers for low pay, often leading to a drain on employee morale. Another issue with having these processes manned by human workers is the chance for error. For the financial industry, human error is particularly problematic as it can lead to organizations falling foul of Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering regulatory compliance.

Luckily, companies are recognizing these dangers and moving more processes toward automation. According to a recent report by PwC in partnership with CBIOpens a new window , “89% (of financial organizations) expect to automate standardized or repetitive tasks over the next five years”. Further, 74% are actively searching for candidates to fulfill future labor needs to do with data science, automation, and digitization more broadly.

Not only is automation advanced enough to step in for more rote, humdrum work, but it can actually improve productivity, as well as lower costs. After all, robots aren’t susceptible to energy peaks and troughs, they aren’t biased, and they don’t need breaks or vacation time. However, it doesn’t mean that automation is replacing human workers.

Rather, automation can enable people to focus on core, high-value tasks without spending large amounts of time on time-consuming, repetitive work. Instead of looking to automation to replace employees, savvy financial organizations are integrating it strategically to plug operational gaps and act as a complementary technological capability to help and enable their workforce.

See More: 6 Reasons Developers Are in Such High Demand Right Now

Harnessing the Best of Both Worlds: Robots and Humans Working Together

Robotic process automation (RPA) can cut financial organizations’ costs by up to 75%, according to KPMGOpens a new window . There is also a positive correlation between robot adoption and productivity gains. According to a report by Select USAOpens a new window , an increase of one percent robot density generates productivity gains of 0.8%, whereas organizations new to robotic adoption witness a 5.1% productivity increase.

Financial organizations are increasingly aware of how to best combine their human workforce with robotic solutions to drive productivity and help employees focus on core areas of their roles and are able to address their document processing automation requirements with a full-scale automation solution, empowering underwriters and other knowledge workers to make faster, more accurate lending decisions.

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