The world’s largest Islamic bank intends to optimize business efficiency by replacing manual labor with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a move which has so far reduced the bank’s vulnerability to potential card fraud cases by 70%.
In less than nine months since it first began automating its banking operations, Al Rajhi Bank has increased the number of automated operations by over 600% to over 60 segments including retail credit card, customer care and banking. The Saudi bank now processes in excess of 15,000 transactions daily under RPA, increasing productivity and efficiency by dramatically reducing the processing time and response time to customers’ requests while simultaneously increasing accuracy and minimizing errors in transactions. Leaving everyday repetitive tasks to its robotic technology, the Islamic bank also managed to redirect its human resources to more value-added and customer-centric services.
The bank is currently working on doubling the usage of RPA before the end of December, COO Waleed Al Mogbel confirmed.
Al Rajhi over the last year has aggressively pushed its fintech agenda: it was the first in the Kingdom to integrate RPA in September 2016, and in May 2017, became the first Saudi bank to conduct a cross-border money transfer using Ripple blockchain technology; it is now looking to scale up the utilization of distributed ledger technology across different business lines, with a special focus on remittance (See IFN Fintech June Issue).