Upward of 90% of financial services firms are seeing business improvements as a return on investment from their automation efforts. The challenge, however, is finding the workplace talent to reap those benefits.  

A study released Tuesday by intelligent automation and digital business services firm Emergn polled 320 executives, including 212 financial services technology leaders, at financial service, pharma and life sciences and insurance firms in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Germany. 

Among banking and finance companies, the largest use case for automation was in customer experience, with 62% rating it the top use, followed closely by transactions at 60%. Another 54% of those respondents said they are using automation in wealth management and investment banking. Slightly less than half, 49%, of these respondents are using automation for compliance and fraud purposes, while 47% are using it for branch and ATM management.  

The study defined intelligent automation as including artificial intelligence, document processing, data correction, classification or predictive analytics. A clear majority of 71% of all respondents characterized their organizations’ ROI from intelligent automation as “high or very high.”  

So what benefits are being reaped? Intelligent automation has improved organizational efficiency for 94% of all respondents, and 90% said it has improved customer service and the customer experience. Nearly nine out of 10 respondents said they’ve seen cost reductions from intelligent automation, while another 87% said intelligent automation has improved their employee experience. 

Across the group of study respondents: 

• 67% are using process or workflow automation; 
• 59% are using intelligent chatbots;  
• 56% are using robotic process automation;  
• 55% are using decision automation or machine learning;  
• 48% are using computer vision or image processing; and  
• 45% are using voice or natural language processing.  

But financial services and other firms participating in the study don’t seem to be looking to intelligent automation in particular as a way to hone their competitive edge — at least not yet. As for what could be keeping intelligent automation from improving organizations’ competitiveness, the study results pointed to process challenges. 

A little more than one-fifth, 22%, of respondents said the complexity of integrating processes is a barrier to implementing intelligent automation. That same number said managing and integrating multiple processes is a challenge.  

The study discovered an interesting before-and-after barrier to intelligent automation. While 9% of all respondents cited a lack of technology skills as a hurdle to integration, from the opposite angle, only 2% of study respondents said their employee workforces fully have all the skills necessary to benefit from intelligent automation. An adequate IT workforce may be in place for many regarding implementation, but the broader workforce may not have the skills to reap the rewards.  

One distinction: Financial services companies were more likely than other industries to cite entrepreneurial/leadership skills as a necessity to help integrate intelligent automation going forward. 

Do employees resent automation? 

A common belief is that employees resent and resist automation. The executive study results found workforce resistance to automation process change is an issue for only 13% of respondents; 11% reported the resistance comes from senior leadership.  

There was less certainty about the role of intelligent automation among study participants. “When asked about attitudes toward intelligent automation at their organization, the most respondents, 34%, say employees see it as an opportunity to improve service levels,” according to the study. “Only 13% of respondents say they see intelligent automation as a necessity to regain competitiveness in the market.”  

Even so, intelligent automation got a strong vote of confidence in another regard: 88% of respondents said the technology has positively affected employee empowerment.  

Also in that vein, study respondents reported that almost none of their organizations’ employees view intelligent automation as a threat to their jobs. In fact, just 6% of participants said employees see intelligent automation in that menacing light. “This small percentage underscores how general attitudes around intelligent automation have shifted away from replacement and toward enablement,” the study noted.