Blue Prism survey reveals untapped opportunities of RPA adoption rates in financial services industry across APAC 

Blue Prism, a global leader in intelligent automation, has released findings from its survey report titled RPA in the APAC Financial Services Sector.  

While there is growing momentum in automation efforts by organizations across Asia Pacific (APAC), the report reveals significant disparity of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) adoption within Asia Pacific’s financial services industry.  

While Australia leads the way with 78% of organizations currently using RPA solutions and technologies, India is second with 49%, followed by Hong Kong (47%), Malaysia (44%) and Singapore (28%). 

With only 34% in Singapore and 50% in Malaysia of respondents indicating familiarity with RPA, there is potential for better comprehension and perception around this technology. This is in comparison to 85% in Australia, 82% in Hong Kong and 75% in India. 

Robert Dewar, Vice President, Financial Services, APAC, Blue Prism, said: “While RPA adoption across global industries grew at tremendous speed, this report revealed the disparity of RPA adoption within the APAC financial services industry, indicating a long roadmap before the region reaches RPA and Intelligent Automation maturity.  

“Presently, the use of RPA adoption remains largely a tool to improve efficiency and cut costs, rather than a catalyst to accelerate Digital Transformation. As markets look to scale up enterprise RPA and Intelligent Automation deployments, our aim is to empower companies to fulfil their vision for strategic business automation and achieve faster, better organizational outcomes.” 

Almost all of the organizations (95%) surveyed felt that the adoption of RPA has improved overall business operations, which includes error and cost reduction (7% each), empowering the workforce to concentrate on higher value tasks (24%) and increasing efficiencies and speed within the organization (61%).  

The report also revealed that across Australia, India, Singapore and Malaysia, the top two areas that companies leverage RPA are the finance and IT departments.  

This differs slightly in Hong Kong, where the top two areas are finance (79%) and customer service (71%) departments. Within the next two to three years, companies in Australia and India expect to continue leveraging RPA the most in the finance and IT departments, while Hong Kong companies expect the same in the finance and customer service departments.  

In Malaysia, besides the finance department (61%), companies are prioritizing RPA programs in sales and marketing (73%) in the next two to three years. Interestingly, the finance department was not included in the top three areas that Singapore companies will be leveraging RPA in the near term, with companies ranking IT departments (61%) as the top priority for RPA adoption, followed by sales and marketing (54%) and customer service (50%). 

Other key findings for each respective market are as follows: 

Australia key findings 

• 99% of organizations believed that RPA has improved overall business operations, including cost and time savings (88%) and increased accuracy and quality of output (76%). 
• Organizations ranked top considerations when drawing RPA budgets to implementation costs (77%) as the most important factor, followed by maintenance costs (70%) and ancillary costs (67%) 

• Of the organizations that are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies (22%), 8% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 4% are planning to do so within the next year  
• Almost nine in 10 (89%) organizations said that the future growth of RPA is promising 

Hong Kong key findings 

• 96% of organizations felt that RPA has improved overall business operations, with significant benefits in cost and time savings (69%) as well as increased accuracy and quality of output (69%).  

• In terms of factors that organizations consider when drawing up an RPA budget, most organizations ranked implementation costs (65%) as the most important factor, followed by ancillary costs (60%) and maintenance costs (59%) 
• 52% of organizations are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies; 31% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 8% are planning to do so within the next year  
• 85% of organizations said that the future growth of RPA is promising  

India key findings 

• 95% of organizations felt that RPA has improved overall business operations cost and time savings (83%) as the most significant benefit associated with RPA adoption, and RPA as a catalyst for driving Digital Transformation (76%) 
• In terms of factors that organizations consider when drawing up an RPA budget, most organizations ranked implementation costs (75%) as the most important factor, followed by maintenance costs (62%) and ancillary costs (44%) 
• Of the organizations that are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies (50%), 27% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 11% are planning to do so within the next year  
• More than nine in 10 (93%) organizations said that the future growth of RPA is promising 

Singapore key findings 

• Among the five markets, Singapore holds the highest percentage of financial institutions (19%) that do not use any of the five disruptive technologies (Artificial Intelligence, business process management, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and predictive analytics) 
• Almost eight in 10 (79%) organizations felt that RPA has improved overall business operations, with a reduction in manpower or burden of administrative personnel (68%) as the most significant benefit, and RPA as a catalyst for driving Digital Transformation (68%) 
• In terms of factors that organizations consider when drawing up a RPA budget, most organizations ranked maintenance costs (88%) as the most important factor, followed by implementation costs (59%) and ancillary costs (59%) 
• Of the organizations that implemented RPA solutions and technologies during the pandemic, most ranked the increased cost and time savings (75%) as well as the reduction in manpower or burden of administrative personnel (75%) as the most important factors 

• 71% of organizations said that the future growth of RPA is promising 

Malaysia key findings 

• 93% of organizations felt that RPA has improved overall business operations, with increasing efficiencies and speed within the organization as the main driver of RPA adoption (86%), followed by allowing workers to concentrate on higher value tasks (70%) and reducing errors (68%) 
• In terms of factors that organizations consider when drawing up an RPA budget, most organizations ranked implementation costs (69%) as the most important factor, followed by maintenance costs (62%), ancillary costs (49%) and business process value (49%) 

• Within the next two to three years, 41% of organizations expect to invest approximately up to 50% of their total automation budget in RPA, and 36% organizations expect to invest approximately up to 75% of their total automation budget in RPA  
• Of the 56% of organizations that are not currently using RPA solutions and technologies, 13% are planning to implement such technologies within the next six months, and 16% are planning to do so within the next year  
• More than eight in 10 (84%) of organizations said that the future growth of RPA is promising 

The research was commissioned by Blue Prism. Respondents include 802 global business leaders in Australia (200), Hong Kong (201), India (201), Malaysia (100) and Singapore (100). All respondents have worked in financial services for 10 years or more and are in companies with more than 10 employees. All interviews were conducted online from September to October 2021.