ROBOYO X KFW
Roboyo
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As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, KfW was faced with a huge increase in loan repayment respite requests. Balancing the need to support customers at speed through this extremely difficult time with the appropriate regulatory administrative processes was a mammoth challenge. Roboyo delivered a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution that saved time and improved operational efficiency considerably.
Our client: KfW is one of the world’s leading promotional banks. Headquartered in Frankfurt, it employs over 7,300 members of staff and is represented at 80 locations worldwide. Committed to improving economic, social and environmental living conditions since 1948, KfW supports people, countries and institutions who think ahead to help drive society forward.
80% of all applications are now processed and completed within a few hours.
Through automation and quality checking mechanisms, errors have been completely eradicated.
We took KfW from zero to hero in just five weeks.
Considering the urgent need to provide support to those affected financially by COVID-19, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany issued the COVID-19-“Abmilderungsgesetz”, with the aim of limiting the negative economic impact of the pandemic on organizations and individuals. Among other elements, the law included an entitlement for financial respite.
As a result, many customers requested urgent respite from their current loan repayments from KfW. Handling these time-sensitive requests with the same legal and compliance requirements as before quickly became a mammoth task as the number of applications rose to a never before seen historic high.
Processing this wave of applications manually, within the desired time period, meant long delays for customers which put many companies at risk of insolvency.
Thousands of companies face risk of insolvency due to COVID-19 crisis
Large increases in the number of applications for assistance
Time pressure increases for application processing
Automation is challenging due to security and compliance requirements
Roboyo’s automation experts, working alongside KfW’s internal team, were able to develop an RPA ‘bot’ which took care of the manual processing in the exact same way a real-life employee would. A first for KfW and in just five weeks!
Previously, all KfW’s systems required manual processing. An employee would need to complete five separate tasks before an application was processed – this included opening the application, checking it, changing the repayment plan, releasing it for approval and then getting approval from two different people. This would need to be repeated for every application.
Now, our robot takes care of all these steps using KfW’s existing systems and includes all the necessary legal and compliance checks. The added bonus is that by using our RPA technology on top of existing systems, we were able to enhance security and lower risk.
In order to execute the double-approval process, we configured two robots to work independently of one another so that one robot, which processes an application, is checked by a second “approver” robot. Only complete congruence between the two allows for the application to be completed and closed.
The automation is traceable to rule out any possibility of mistakes and by implementing a complete data backup and dashboard, compliance with quality standards was maintained.
The robot can process a huge number of applications, work a lot faster and even more importantly, work around the clock, reducing the strain on KfW’s employees and freeing them up to focus on higher-value tasks.
By implementing a relatively simple RPA solution, processing thousands of customers’ requests was realized. A result which would have taken several months to achieve using traditional non-automated methods.
Ensuring fast processing times ensured that KfW was able to fulfil its commitment to improving economic and social living conditions for its customers and help them navigate the crisis. The workload within the relevant KfW departments has now returned to an attainable level after the go-live of the robot, KfW have a much more productive workforce and an extremely efficient digital workforce.