Staff in the banking and financial services (FS) industry are three times more likely to follow processes “rigorously” than government workers, according to new research surveying senior decision-makers by Digital Intelligence company ABBYY. In fact, almost half (46%) of banking and FS workers rigorously follow the rules, compared to just 15% in government.

Staff not following processes claim processes are too complex or there are too many to follow. Encouragingly, leaders are open to a helping hand with an enormous 98% in banking and FS think process mining technologies would be helpful to their business, as did 89% in insurance.

“In a rapidly shifting industry like financial services – where incumbent institutions have struggle to keep pace with emerging, innovative challenger brands – figuring out which processes work best and which don’t, and which are too complex or hard to understand, is a game-changer,” said Bruce Orcutt, SVP of Product Marketing at ABBYY.

“Only then can the best processes be automated, freeing up staff to take on more strategic, human-centric work.”

Fortunately, FS leaders believe their staff are well-motivated to follow processes and rules. Only 12% of staff don’t have the motivation in banking and FS, and as few as 8% in insurance. Overall, approximately 9 in 10 bosses (89%) in both banking, FS and insurance said processes are “rigorously” or “mostly” followed.

Conversely, a quarter (25%) of government leaders say their employees aren’t motivated to follow the rules – and an even greater proportion (31%) think they don’t have the time. In times of crisis, processes and procedures are even more critical to getting work done. This casts a worrying light on the actions of government workers during the current pandemic.

Figure 1. How well do you think business processes are followed in your organization?

When financial services employees do break the rules, it’s often to provide better customer service – 62% of insurance leaders have confidence that their employees do so to meet the needs of customers, and 50% of banking and FS bosses agree. This suggests financial services staff are extremely customer-driven, and willing to bend the rules when it’s better for customers.

Figure 2. Why do you believe employees don’t always follow processes strictly? Tick all that apply.

Orcutt continued, “The survey suggests the importance of gaining visibility to business processes as they actually behave, identify variances and identifying how they can better meet current customer needs is an essential first step in achieving digital transformation.

“This is especially critical for financial services companies facing unprecedented pressure due to a perfect storm of maintaining business continuity during a pandemic, technological disruption and evolving customer expectations that impacted call centre operations. This can be achieved using innovative Process Intelligence solutions.”  

For information on how financial services organizations can navigate their processes and content, visit Digital Intelligence for Financial Services and the blog post ABBYY helps bank overcome process challenges.

The global survey was sponsored by ABBYY and executed by Opinium Research in March 2020 with organizations across banks, financial services and government.