European Bank Transforms Operations with Intelligent Document Processing

A major European banking group with more than 10,000 employees across several countries—and annual revenue exceeding € 2 Billion—had been growing at nearly 20% YoY, but their outdated document and client onboarding processes lacked the scalability to grow without adding considerable risk.

Today, the banking group and its subsidiaries are realizing meaningful business benefits thanks to an intelligent document processing (IDP) solution from Kodak Alaris. The organization is now able to process physical and digital documents 30% more efficiently. This upgrade has significantly improved customer satisfaction, reduced risks regarding data security and regulatory compliance, and delivered sustainable cost savings.

The Challenge: A lack of automation led to decreased productivity and higher costs

Each day, the bank processes thousands of documents that originate from multiple sites and internal sources and are received in different formats: web platforms, mobile forms, emails, internal scans, and deliveries from Business Process Outsourcing services (BPOs). Their business process routed more than 900 different document types to a central system where the data was classified and extracted. This information was then sent to the appropriate subsidiary or team for review prior to informing customers of the bank’s decision regarding their applications.

One of the biggest problems was the time spent on document preparation and the large number of exceptions that had to be carefully managed. For example, many documents coming from the BPO were of poor quality, resulting in low extraction accuracy and the need for manual handling and data entry.

To successfully scale their operations and continue their growth path, the bank needed to eliminate the bottlenecks associated with manual document classification and data extraction that had been wasting valuable employee time and producing costly errors. In situations where data bypassed the central process, there was no enforcement of data handling rules, which raised concerns over regulatory compliance and the possibility of fines.

The banking group researched various document automation solutions with three key goals in mind:

1. Mitigate risk associated with data security and regulatory compliance.
2. Reduce financial overhead by improving labor efficiency.
3. Improve customer satisfaction by eliminating application processing delays.

The Solution: KODAK Info Input Solution paired with advanced document scanners from Kodak Alaris

Kodak Alaris delivered a solution that automates customer onboarding and other business processes with the help of machine learning, advanced document scanning, and automated sorting capabilities that reduce preparation time, improve image quality, and speed up the entire operation.

First, Kodak Alaris provided the bank with a Kodak i5850s high-volume production scanner to manage the digitization of documents at their head office, and two Kodak i4650 scanners installed at separate locations. Then, for start-to-finish intelligent document automation, they implemented Kodak Info Input Solution, award-winning intelligent document processing software that automatically transforms documents of various types into business-critical information.

Info Input Solution captures documents and data from any digital or physical source, including high-volume production scanners at hundreds of pages per minute. The software can easily keep pace with the Kodak i5850s. “Kodak Alaris was the only technology provider that could offer an innovative and scalable solution based on machine learning,” said Aline Saponara, Key Account Manager at Kodak Alaris.

The Result: More automation, better compliance, and satisfied customers

The customized capture and document automation solution from Kodak Alaris has enabled the banking group to seamlessly process information more efficiently and consistently. Minimizing manual processes means more work can be completed in less time. This upgrade has delivered substantial cost savings and improved customer satisfaction. The highly accurate data automation has reduced concerns about data security and compliance.

Info Input Solution is web-based software, so it provides the bank with real-time access to scanned information for all staff, regardless of their location. This IDP technology has enabled the bank to capture, extract, and index data from both digital files and physical documents—including email from 500 mailboxes—much faster and more accurately than ever before.

Scanners from Kodak Alaris deliver industry-leading image quality, which helps to minimize exceptions and enable superior OCR read rates, while advanced paper handling and sorting features eliminate the need for manual effort. More than 900 document types in multiple languages are now automatically classified, including ID documents, customer contracts, loan forms, new account onboarding forms, and proof of residence documents like electricity bills and mortgage statements.

The ability to leverage machine learning to automate the process of classifying documents, extracting key data, and indexing that data, has substantially shortened the time it takes to onboard and process documents. This has reduced overall response times by 30%  and positively impacted customer satisfaction.

With significantly fewer exceptions to manage, all data is routed through the central business process. This ensures business rules around data security—such as anonymizing personal data—can be reliably enforced, helping the bank meet regulatory requirements and reduce risk of punitive fines for non-compliance.

“The bank can now quickly and accurately classify high volumes of documents while integrating emails into the process,” Saponara added. “We were the only company that could deliver a proof of concept by the deadline, and our one-week turnaround far exceeded the bank’s expectations. All the other vendors required two months to deliver a comparable solution.”

With intelligent document processing and automation solutions from Kodak Alaris, the top European banking group has successfully achieved their goals to mitigate data security and compliance risk, reduce labor expenses through process efficiency gains, and improve the customer experiences by simplifying application processing.