Process optimization and automation success in banking

Financial institutions were some of the earliest pioneers to embrace technology in daily operations.  Then, amidst an economic crisis and global pandemic, it becomes even more critical for processes to run smoothly.

Today, banks are leveraging process automation software to reduce employee and customer pain points, minimize wait times for remote services, and streamline processes like loan origination and card deployment.

In this blog, we celebrate some of the automation successes leading financial institutions around the world are making to improve the experience for their customers and employees.

Auswide Bank

Headquartered in Bundaberg, Australia, Auswide Bank serves over 85,000 customers in the Queensland region.

At the front of their mission is providing customers with the best banking experience – and because of this promise, Auswide Bank established what it calls the “Road to Right”. The Road to Right is the bank’s initiative to ensure that they do the right thing for their customers the first time, every time.

To do this they are tackling customer-facing processes as their top priority and leveraging Nintex Promapp® to fully understand their processes and improve them.

Auswide Bank implemented Nintex Promapp® by working with front-end and back-end process owners to visually map processes end to end.

This created a standardized approach to their processes that weren’t there before and highlighted areas where they could streamline to deliver services to customers faster. Additionally, leveraging Nintex Promapp® has accelerated collaboration on process improvements and is driving continuous improvement.

The bank additionally utilizes Nintex Workflow and Nintex Forms to automate and streamline processes like loan origination and personal banking processes. The efforts have resulted in fivefold improvement in loan origination services and improved customer experiences.

Since implementing the Nintex Process Platform, Auswide Bank has mapped 900+ processes, improved collaboration, increased process efficiency and eliminated forms.

Extraco Banks

Founded over 115 years ago, Extraco Banks is the largest and most comprehensive independent financial institution in central Texas.

The bank has adopted a lean culture focused on eliminating waste and process improvement to compete with the larger national banks.

One of the bank’s most manual processes was approving their customer’s remote deposit capture (RDC) requests. Due to the limited staff managing this task, requests were only processed twice a day – sometimes causing customers to wait days to be approved for remote deposit.

The bank leveraged Nintex RPA and worked with a Nintex Solution Engineer to develop a solution in just 12 hours.

Using Nintex, a RPA Botflow™ now checks for RDC requests every hour and completes any requests in three to five minutes – saving the bank 1,200 hours per year. In addition to reviewing requests, the bot also monitors the customer’s ATM deposit feature.

“We want to find manual processes that bog down our employees’ time and create a new process that meets today’s business need. These are the process that don’t add a lot of value to job design, and by automating them we can give our employees back time to focus on higher value tasks, that make a bigger impact for the bank and our employees.”

— Cal Stevens, Vice President and Business Process Improvement Manager, Extraco Banks

Shortly after the Nintex RPA solution rolled out, the bank was receiving over 40 RDC requests a day as branch locations closed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

Thanks to Nintex RPA, the bank had an automated process in place and kept staff free to help customers calling in for support.

Red River Bank

Headquartered in Alexandria, Red River Bank is the sixth-largest Louisiana-based community bank and serves customers from 25 locations.

The bank’s automation success is no secret, as Red River Bank was the 2020 Solution Innovation Award Winner for the solution they developed in response to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

When the Small Business Association (SBA) rolled out details of the PPP loans, Red River Bank knew they would need to streamline and automate the process due to the volume of applications they anticipated.

When they looked to other software providers, they were quoted at least a week after the PPP requirements were finalized and announced. They knew that would put them at the end of the race and their customers would suffer.

“Our customers were hurting and needed access to these loans immediately. Waiting a week to even bring the loan application online was out of the question.”

— Aaron Nation, VP and Chief Data Officer, Red River Bank

Luckily Aaron Nation, VP and Chief Data Officer at Red River Bank, turned to Nintex and was able to build his own solution in just 36 hours.

Using Nintex Forms, Nintex Workflows, and Nintex DocGen® with a connecter to DocuSign for electronic signature, he built a solution to capture the information required in the SBA’s preliminary application, generate a loan application, collect required documents, and more.

Red River Bank received the first application 34 minutes after the bank notified customers. By 72 hours, they had received 400 applications and counting. When the government closed the funding a week later, Red River Bank had received more than 1,400 applications for $198 million in approved SBA loans – all through their Nintex solution.

Thanks to the solution, Red River Bank was one of the first to market with PPP loans in the region, beating national competitors by several days. And possibly the biggest impact – an estimated 24,000 jobs were saved.

“It was a whirlwind couple of weeks,” Nation says, looking back. “And with Nintex, I built something amazing in a short period of time.”

Read the case study to learn more.