Co-op automates banking processes

Move frees administrative staff for customer service roles

The Co-operative Bank has moved a significant number of administrative staff into customer-facing jobs by automating key business processes.

The company is in the final stages of automating 10 time-consuming business processes – including direct debit cancellations, bank account closures and foreign payments – using software from vendor Blue Prism. It has already made significant time and cost savings.

The project has been so successful that the bank is considering automation of other financial processes, says business systems manager Joanne Masters.
‘More employees are now dealing with customers and queries rather than with mundane paperwork,’ she said.

Prior to automation, staff each had the capacity to process 12 account closures an hour. The software has increased this to 200.

Before the system was deployed, direct debit and standing order cancellations and the transfer of interest and funds from closed accounts had to be conducted manually.

But now customer service staff complete an electronic form while speaking to the customer. The information is then communicated to the Blue Prism system, which automatically deals with the requests.

‘It used to take a considerable amount of time and require numerous manual actions,’ said Masters.

The time it takes to process a same-day electronic payment transfer has been cut from 10 minutes per request to 20 seconds. The time to provide auditors with information about business customer accounts and year-end balances for large audits has been reduced from several days to just 30 minutes.

The bank can also now start processing 99 per cent of loan applications made over the internet on the day they are made.

‘We are now able to resolve most customer queries in one phone call,’ said Masters.
‘Our employees spend more time dealing directly with customers, and our service-level agreements can be maintained and guaranteed.’