ABANCA is the leading financial entity in northwestern Spain with 682 branches in 11 countries across Europe and America, 6,080 employees and a turnover of more than €107 million. With Blue Prism, ABANCA has automated 386 tasks and saved thousands of employee hours. The established partnership positioned ABANCA to tackle its COVID-19-related challenges head-on. When COVID-19 began to affect its business customers, ABANCA was able to quickly deliver vital “Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO)” business state loans by using Blue Prism to speed up its business processes.

Challenge

ABANCA is a Galicia-based banking and financial services organization with an extensive network consisting of 686 branches. The bank specializes in simple, innovative, and transparent products and services—ultimately aimed at providing personalized service to each customer. Looking to improve efficiency and drive growth, ABANCA first sought Blue Prism intelligent automation solutions in 2016. At the time, the business was acquiring other banks, and with that growth came more transactions and tasks. ABANCA knew it needed to increase productivity quickly to manage this huge rise in volume without increasing its employee count. When the pandemic struck, ABANCA needed a rapid solution once again. To support businesses affected by COVID-19, the bank needed a way to process and deliver government-backed state loans quickly and efficiently. The bank knew that if they couldn’t process the loans rapidly, many businesses wouldn’t survive.

Solution

After deploying a Blue Prism digital workforce in 2016, ABANCA quickly scaled its intelligent automation program. Now, the team of digital workers completes 386 critical tasks within the business. 

What’s more, when COVID-19 began affecting businesses, having a digital workforce already in place put ABANCA in the position to assist those customers quickly. The automation team reused objects from other processes and adapted them to a new automated loan payment process.

In fact, they were one of the first banks capable of transferring state ICO funds to COVID-19-impacted businesses. Digital workers processed the complex loan applications and immediately transferred the funds to customers. ABANCA provided exemplary customer support by making these funds available to customers upfront — before being reimbursed by the state government.

Using intelligent automation, the ABANCA team configured the tasks across the entire application process, from validation to payment. The new process was designed and in place within 24 hours, and it was aided by the free licenses granted by Blue Prism to customers throughout the pandemic.

ABANCA continues to grow its robust automation program, with every department at the bank now using Blue Prism in some capacity and 100 citizen developers trained to design their own automations. In the past five years, the automation team and citizen developers have returned 484,600 hours back to the business and saved €14.2 million.