The Challenge
The excess queue procedure at The Co-operative Bank is carried out daily to accept, reject and return direct debits, checks and standing orders as a result of the customer having insufficient funds to meet payments.
Overnight BACS processing results in a daily “queue” of customers with payments due to leave their accounts and with insufficient funds to meet these payments.
A nine-person team in the bank would have the daily responsibility of manually reviewing approximately 2,500 higher risk accounts. They would then make a decision to either return or process the payments depending on the account profile of each customer. Due to the manual and time consuming process of reviewing each account, it was determined that the excess queue procedure should be automated.
“The Bank is committed to proactively supporting customers. The business case for the project was to redeploy staff from manual roles into customer-facing account management roles, to alleviate the daily time pressure of having to complete all processing by a 3 p.m. deadline and to manage all customer accounts with the same degree of accuracy and consistency,” said Business Systems Manager at The Co-Operative Bank, Joanne Masters.
The Solution
The Co-operative Financial Services completed its automation project using Blue Prism’s connected-RPA platform. This platform enables non-technical users to integrate and orchestrate systems and processes noninvasively and without change to the bank’s core systems. The automation of the entire procedure means that the bank now has 20 Digital Workers completing the workloads by 11 a.m. each day instead of a team of employees working to meet a 3 p.m. daily processing deadline.
“The excess queue procedure is now managed entirely by Blue Prism, requires little human intervention and the project is well on its way to achieving all of our objectives,” said Masters.
The Benefits
The bank has seen a number of benefits as a result of automating the excess queue procedure.
- Proactive Customer Account Management – Employees previously engaged in manual processing have been released to work on proactive customer account management. Outbound customer calls can now be made every day of the week where previously they were confined to Saturday when there was no activity required on the excess queue.
“More staff are now working on outbound customer calls and we are able to quickly identify customers in financial difficulty and proactively call them to discuss their accounts, rather than reacting too late, enhancing our overall customer service,” commented Masters.
- Consistency – Treating customers fairly and in a consistent and timely manner is of paramount importance to the bank. The rules-based Blue Prism process ensures that the excess queue procedure is followed in exactly the same way every time, ensuring that the bank is able to meet its FSA obligations.
- Time Savings – Prior to automation, 11 employees would work beginning at 7:30 a.m. to clear the queue. On high-volume days they would struggle to meet the 3 p.m. deadline for payment processing. With 80% of the process already automated, nine team members have been moved across to customer facing roles.
Benefits Summary
- Redeployment of employees into proactive customer account management roles
- 80% of process now automated
- Increased inbound customer service call levels
- Significant improvement of consistencies around customer account management
- Creation of “virtual team of 20 employees” ensures processing deadline is met each day
To learn more about how Blue Prism RPA can help your business, contact us today!
