The Digital Era KB Kookmin Bank Dreams of

What is the RPA ACE team, the agile organization of KB Bank? An agile organization aims to adapt quickly to changes in circumstances, making it a priority to manage projects efficiently and secure leading competitiveness.

The RPA ACE team, whose deputy general manager is Choi Jongdeok, is an organization focusing on introducing and implementing Robot Process Automation (RPA) across the bank. We asked Choi to explain what ACE and RPA is. "RPA ACE is an agile organization, in which we currently have 11 members, and was formed to introduce the RPA project quickly. We at ACE are responsible for every task related to RPA from planning to technical review and implementation of RPA in all branches. The goal is to streamline the business process of employees at our branches and headquarters by introducing RPA." Choi said.

The current big trend is digital transformation

Organizations agile to external circumstances have also been expected to respond quickly to COVID-19, which is the biggest issue of this year. What is the internal workflow of KB Kookmin Bank like? "Transactions were in the past mostly made face to face at branches but after the outbreak of COVID-19, direct business demand has been growing gradually. We are likewise expanding our direct business, which used to only be applied in limited areas, in more branches by introducing new technologies. For example, with optical character recognition (OCR) technology, our customers can submit documents and consult with our agents about a loan process in a 'direct' manner without having to visit a physical bank branch." Choi explained.

One phrase that represents the changes currently being made in KB Kookmin Bank is digital transformation.

"KB Kookmin Bank has also been preparing for digital transformation over a few years, and it was about three years ago when we first embarked on RPA. One example is 'wage transfer registration'. A wage transfer service is a simple task but staff still had to check every item for them to be registered. By automating this service with RPA, now all our staffs have to do is simply make a final decision." he said.

Currently, as many as 183 services have been automated like this, saving as much as 1.25 million working hours in total. In particular, it is also a huge advantage that RPA enables introduction of robot automation directly into the existing systems.

KB Kookmin Bank is moving forward with UiPath RPA

How was the process of introducing RPA and how is it now? "The RPA we used previously worked only for some services, on individual PCs rather than a server. As we were given larger scale automation tasks from last year though, we began to use UiPath RPA. As UiPath RPA works reliably even on large-scale services and provides visual information in the event of any problem. Currently, we conduct almost all tasks with UiPath RPA." he said.​

"Since we automated business with RPA, positive responses are coming from all over but especially from the teams that have to perform many routine tasks. But, there have been some that have raised complaints about RPA-applied systems stopping due to external circumstance changes. We are actively working on improving this, and when we explain our primary goal of enhancing work efficiency, most of them accept it." he said.

When asked about what goals KB Kookmin Bank has set looking at RPA, Choi said, "The existing projects focused on quantitative expansion as they were implemented in early stage. The third project, which focuses on automating large-scale services, will extend the scope of automation from simple routine services to high added value services. In addition to quantitative expansion, we also aim to bring efficiency to both quality and management."

To automate large-scale services as planned in the third project, it is essential for individual staff members to have an understanding of automation work. We asked about the possibility of introducing hyperautomation platforms, such as UiPath's StudioX, Process Mining, Task Mining, and Action Center.

We are paying attention to end-to-end automation. In particular, discovering business and implementing tasks in a top down manner requires a significant amount of time in business analysis or calculation. It is expected that by introducing business logs, Process Mining or Action Center, we can also extend the scope of business we can discover. StudioX is much more user-friendly than the existing development tools, and requires no knowledge related to IT development. We are paying attention to the tool in that RPA business will be more efficient in a bottom up manner despite it currently being developed in a top down manner.

Choi Jongdeok • Deputy General Manager of RPA ACE team, KB Kookmin Bank

Dreaming of a better working environment with improved labor productivity

Deputy general manager Choi Jongdeok said he was happy that staff members were finding work-life balance through RPA.

KB Kookmin Bank is addressing difficulties its employees have by introducing RPA. Choi said he felt rewarded when he saw staff members who typically had to get to work very early in the morning to process simple work or that were chronically overworked now finding work-life balance through RPA

KB Kookmin Bank has just kicked off its journey to RPA. We will consider not only RPA robots, but also various other methods and technologies including hyperautomation to create an automated working environment that all employees can actually feel without difficulties.

Choi Jongdeok • Deputy General Manager of RPA ACE team, KB Kookmin Bank