Robotic Process Automation: A Digital Element Of Operational Resilience

Operational resilience has risen to the top of board and senior management agendas due to the ever-expanding threat of business disruptions. These disruptions can be caused by social unrest, cyber attacks, third party risk, climate change, pandemics, and geopolitical risk. In response to the recognized need for guidance, various regulatory authorities – such as those of the U.K., the U.S., and the Basel Committee – have issued their expectations for improving the resilience of financial services firms. They have stressed the need to limit the impact of disruptions to business functions and emplace the ability to quickly recover and restore business processes when incidents occur. At the same time, the ongoing digital transformation, with its triad of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA), has attained the necessary maturity to begin to be implemented across the financial services industry. Specifically, RPA holds the promise of becoming an indispensable part of operational resilience, given its ability to create autonomous bots that can perform human operator tasks. This paper outlines the reasons for the adoption of RPA and why it is a necessary component of operational resilience, and explains the challenges inherent with its adoption as well outlining the benefits of adopting it within control-centric functions.