The idea of artificial tends to strike fear in the hearts of workers who suspect they’ll be replaced by robots.
The reality is more nuanced. There is no question some jobs will be lost. But others will be created, and still others will morph into something different — bot designer, bot supervisor, soother of the most irate customers. In some cases, AI will just take on extra work nobody wants to do.
In one example of the latter, First National Bank of Wynne in Arkansas has been using robotic process automation, the lowest-IQ form of AI, to help with acquisitions.
“When you acquire a bank, one of the biggest cost expenses is the core conversion piece,” explained Bart Green, senior vice president.
All customer and account information, including for cards, internet banking and cash management, has to be migrated to the acquiring bank’s core system. It is time-consuming.
A consultant told them about RPA software from EnableSoft called Foxtrot. Other providers of RPA software include Blue Prism, UiPath and WorkFusion.
RPA software can be set up to perform tasks the way a human would — it can log into software by entering a username and password, it can click on a client record, then log into another piece of software, locate a data field and copy and paste that data into the first page. It can be set up so you can watch it on a desktop, and it looks as if a ghost were operating the computer.
“You could teach it, just like you would teach an employee, how to input information into systems, and it can do it efficiently and quickly,” Green said. It’s better at reporting errors and validating data.
Using the software has saved the bank 70% in conversion costs, he said.
Now the bank is beginning to find other uses for the software.
“It’s a matter of thinking of what kinds of manual, time-consuming processes do we have today and how can we automate them?” Green said.
For instance, the bank recently had to mass reissue debit cards due to a breach. That could be done by bots.
The RPA software has not affected jobs so far at the bank because it is being used for one-off, time-consuming projects like mergers, Green said.
“I’ve yet to put it in place to replace a daily duty,” he said. “I can see that occurring. I’m just beginning to start peeling away the layers of that possibility.”
He could also see hiring someone in IT who has experience with RPA software to help figure out new uses for it.
“It may end up canceling out jobs — you’re creating a job that does this task to remove the task required by another employee,” Green noted.
What jobs will be lost, gained?
Some bankers and observers have suggested that only the boring parts of jobs, drudgery like data entry and filling out forms, will disappear so the humans will be able to focus on more interesting tasks, and that no actual jobs will be lost.
Bank employees themselves seem to think this. In an Accenture survey released last week of 1,300 nonexecutive bank employees, 67% said they believe AI will improve their work-life balance, and 57% expect it will expand their career prospects.
But Autonomous Research also issued a report last week that estimated that in the U.S. alone, 2.5 million financial services employees will be “exposed” to AI technologies in the front, middle and back office — 1.2 million working in banking and lending, 460,000 in investment management, and 865,000 in insurance.
“These functions will see 20-40% productivity gains, or unemployment, depending on your vantage point,” the report stated. About $1 trillion in costs will be exposed to AI transformation in financial services sectors by 2030, according to the report; $450 million of this would in banking.
In banking, 70% of front-office jobs will be dislocated by AI, the researchers say: 485,000 tellers, 219,000 customer service representatives, and 174,000 loan interviewers and clerks. They will be replaced by chatbots, voice assistants and automated authentication and biometric technology.
