By Emmanuel Walckenaer, CEO at Yseop

The need for constant, often immediate, data-backed, written reports drives teams across banks and financial institutions to work around the clock to perform in an accurate and timely fashion. Deadlines loom and time is of the essence. Between operational and regulatory reporting, credit monitoring and financial analysis, professionals often spend countless hours exploring, identifying and deciphering mounds of data to produce complex reports. The manual process of obtaining the data often leads to long hours and decision making fatigue.

Manual reporting not only eats up valuable time, but is inefficient in catching human errors that can be detrimental to the team. For optimal success, all reports must be error-proof, completed at a rapid pace, and highlight key data and risks for regulators and decision makers to rely on. Companies are in need of a viable solution to help alleviate some of this immense pressure and allocate professionals’ time in a more productive way. The solution: intelligent automation, specifically powered by Natural Language Generation (NLG).

Intelligent automation can turn frustrations into previously unearthed competitive advantages, as it transforms how organizations operate. It streamlines workflows using artificial intelligence (AI) and digitizes manual operations through machine learning (ML). Using NLG to scale human expertise benefits the financial services sector in a myriad of ways – from improved quality, accuracy and efficiency of reporting, to driving innovation and further empowering professionals. It ensures that high quality and accuracy are standard, allowing teams to no longer feel the dread of crunching numbers in a short period of time. Below we have highlighted three key impacts NLG has on the financial services sector.

1. Use NLG to Improve Quality, Accuracy and Efficiency

In the heavily regulated financial services world, efficiency, consistency and quality are essential. There is no wiggle room for error, as regulators, shareholders, finance and risk personnel come from all directions to ensure reporting is accurate and drives productive insights.

Advanced NLG automatically produces narratives that describe, summarize or explain structured data at the lightning speed of thousands of pages per second. Applying NLG to the production of complex financial reporting can alleviate major time consuming pain points by automating detailed aspects of manual reporting. The ability to generate reports instantly reduces delays in delivering reports to stakeholders and regulation boards – making deadlines simple to achieve.

Variance Analysis is a critical part of any financial planning and analysis department, however, the drafting is monotonous and the end-result can contain human error. With NLG, banks can integrate different forecasts and automate organizational reporting and analysis, which in turn, saves teams significant time and streamlines efficiency. Financial institutions can have the peace of mind that reports are not only mobilized at a rapid pace, but are error free. Utilizing NLG simplifies risk and compliance reports by providing accurate and high-quality written narratives at scale – while saving time, money and resources.

2. Empower Professionals to Grow

Financial services companies often feel inundated with reports, data-crunching and analysis. Interpreting this data can not only be draining and difficult, but is not conducive for professional growth. NLG modernizes workflows by freeing employees from tedious tasks, allowing individuals to regain power over their time and energy and focus on providing valuable insights. The value lies in the comprehensive insights that are pulled from the data, rather than the tedious process and time it takes behind the scenes to gather it. Intelligent automation and advanced technologies can help alleviate the heavy pressure often put on employees to pull data in a timely manner, and make room for time spent on more productive decisions and meaningful work that can better help all parties involved.

Redirecting the focus from monotonous data hunting and error checks to thought-provoking tasks can help valuable knowledge workers progress.

3. Address the Myths and Doubts

Transitioning to intelligent automation might come with skepticism. Common myths include that intelligent automation is difficult to grasp, takes time to implement and understand, and is being used to replace employees. However, the benefits can outweigh any negative perception or concern that a company and its employees may have. First, it’s critical to understand that automation does not mean replacement. Rather, it has the power to reinforce and enhance tasks, while still maintaining the necessary human element. For instance, the goal is not to replace employees, but to help transform them into augmented professionals and decision makers. After all, AI technologies are only truly effective when combined with human intelligence.

Financial institutions are embracing technology and its impact now more than ever. Automating time-consuming processes allow financial services companies to transform their operations completely, and reap the benefits of time and money savings, and providing employees with the opportunity to focus on important decisions and strategic tasks. Many tend to think that transitioning to an automated workforce is difficult to understand and deploy. However, the advantages can well outweigh any concerns with the proper resources and time to retrain and provide transparent expectations.