How CIMB used automation to raise staff productivity

CIMB automated 10 processes in 2023, equal to 17,000 man-hour savings. 

Removing bank staff’s repetitive tasks from their plate could make turnaround times 90% faster– and robotic process automation (RPA) could make this possible.

“A lot of repetitive tasks that we do which waste a lot of our time. And RPA is supposed to automate these tasks and is supposed to complete them in a faster and more accurate way, leading to better efficiency,” Khairul Rifaie, group chief financial officer (CFO) for CIMB, told attendees of the Malaysian leg of the Asian Banking & Finance Forum held in DoubleTree by Hilton Kuala Lumpur.

RPA does well in filling in for these “repetitive” tasks due to the fact that it was designed for executing rule based business processes, mimicking or copying human processes or manual tasks. This frees up humans to do more value-added areas of work.

Rifaie said that RPA helps increase staff productivity by 35% to 50%.

“It can reduce up to 90% of the turnaround time and also reduces the handling of the work itself by close to 40%,” Rifaie said.

RPA also improves responsiveness, particularly long delays tied to manual tasks and responding to customers. 

“In manual processes, there are significant risks of errors that arise from those manual processes. So with robots that are programmed to do specific tasks, it is very precise and significantly reduces errors, providing substantial comfort and assurance in our quality of delivery,” Rifaie said.

“Manual processes also lead to a lot of workflow that is complicated and very hard to track. Whereas, in terms of adopting RPA, the processes will be a lot more streamlined, easier to track, and more straightforward,” he added.

CIMB, for their part, has already migrated close to about 23 processes within the bank to use RPA between 2018 and 2022.

“Last year we had a specific project on RPA SLE 1.0 where we further automated 10 new processes which led to about 17,000 man-hour savings or avoidance of time,” Rifaie said.

For 2024, CIMB is looking to migrate 20 new processes. The bank estimates that it will save 13,000 man-hours when implemented.

Next year, Rifaie said that CIMB is aiming to automate 32 processes.