There is a lot of excitement surrounding robotic process automation and artificial intelligence and their potential for automation in business.
A new white paper by Fiserv, a global provider of financial services technology solutions, looks at how these emerging technologies will be able to drive significant increases in productivity and efficiency in the wealth management industry.
Fiserv defines robotic process automation (RPA) as the programming of machines to mimic the way humans manage and perform tasks. As a form of intelligent automation, RPA relies on software rather than actual robots to imitate the activity of humans and carry out repetitive tasks.
Through the use of intelligent algorithms, RPA can react to events and triggers to follow step-by-step procedures in various scenarios.
In wealth management, RPA can take over tedious and mundane tasks that humans perform, to service both the advisor and the middle and home office.
"Much like the improvements to manufacturing processes that have taken place over many years, and that have resulted in better efficiency, design and safety, we believe wealth management is now going through this same cycle, mirroring the automation and improvement that has taken place in manufacturing since the late '70s and '80s," the white paper, "How Digitalization Is Reshaping Wealth Management," states.
The first step in robotic process automation is to examine tasks that rely on structured data and involve manual processes and high volumes.
In wealth management, the use of RPA makes the most sense when tasks are simple, manual, high volume, content intensive, have few exceptions and are prone to human error.
