Tanfeeth Operations entering the Conversational Tech Era

At its core, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) used by Emirates NBD Group keeps us competitive in today’s market. We can define RPA in banking as the use of a combination of robots and artificial intelligence to replace and augment human operations in banking. Simply, as technology advances and algorithms become smarter, there is an urgent need to deploy robots to perform repetitive and mundane tasks while entrusting humans with more analytical roles.

We are pleased to share that within Tanfeeth PCS there has been driving implementation of technology to better use its human capital for quite some time. Earlier this year, our payment screening process was considered for automation. Given that the process is deeply analytical in nature, it was not possible to fully automate the workflow and complete the straight-through-process. However, it was agreed to automate the straightforward tasks using robotics with the assistance of digital team. Although RPA is not our go-to tool for automation, it has been a good fit for payment screening where certain tasks were ideally suited for deployment of robots.

In collaboration, the Digital Team started working with Payment Screening Unit (PSU) to understand and codify the defining logic behind the various steps involved in screening a payment. Initially, 2 robots were deployed which reviewed about 300 Emirates NBD AED payments in a 12-hour period. These 300 payments were screened by the robots and eventually sent to human staff for the final decision.

Numerous discussions, meetings, and brainstorming sessions were held with a fully supportive and dedicated Digital team & Group Compliance which continually honed the logic governing the behavior and functionality of the Robots. There were several false starts where robots had to be called off due to post-deployment real world issues. Nevertheless, the teams persisted and today PSU has 24 robots working alongside their human colleagues. The robots work round-the-clock and screen more than 2500 transactions in a 24-hour period, clearing about a third of those transactions independent of any human intervention.

As the robots review and monitor thousands of transactions with every passing day, the PSU and Digital teams continue to work together to further optimize the screening logic and the robots’ output. We aim to increase the number of robots to 40 before the year is out and to extend the scope not only to EI payments but also to include foreign currencies.

This is only the beginning, the team will continue to focus on innovative and technologically advanced ways to increase operational efficiencies and faster turnaround times in the near future. The Tanfeeth PCS team would like to appreciate and give thanks to the Emirates NBD Digital team and Group Compliance for assisting in this process.

Thank you for your feedback!

How was your experience?

We'd love to know.

1 = Poor, 10 = Excellent