Automation the future of financial services
DST System’s Shaun McKenna has told Money Management that there is a growing trend in the financial services industry to achieve wholly or partially automated processing systems.
McKenna said in what has been coined the “fourth industrial revolution”, removing costs, implementing technologies and driving automation was the future of the financial services industry, particularly in sectors that currently have a disjointed claims process, for example life insurance.
The high-touch points would still require person-to-person service, but for commodity and claims processes, automation would soon substitute traditional operating models.
McKenna said that although the automation process has made some ground, many large corporations that have acquired systems and companies were facing challenges, as their branches had become more disjointed. DST’s key concern, then, was ensuring that organisations are “fit and ready” to take automated technology on.
“Things like manual processes and legacy systems have stopped the automation process, so it’s about reconciling to find the target state, and identifying what technologies can be used to get there,” said McKenna.
McKenna also noted the changing workforce could mean that full or partial roles would be removed, and repetitive jobs would likely be replaced by technologies like artificial intelligence, chatbots and other automated processes.
McKenna said technologies like robo-advice were yet to take off in Australia, having proved to be more popular in the US, but that it was a channel that would become more useful in the next five years.
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