As a leader in India’s hugely competitive financial services sector, homegrown giant Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited (MOFSL) has experienced a phase of significant growth and transformation over the last decade. With customer experience becoming a key determiner of business success even in the traditionally antiquated financial sector, the company has made rapid strides over the past few years. Powered by industry-leading technology, we are delivering a combination of best-in- class intelligence, convenience, and customer experience to our clients across sectors and portfolio types.

Growing Expectations. Exponential Opportunity
The consumer decides the demand, not only decides the demand, volume or quality, but also the context and method. A combination of these growing expectations and the current events has meant that businesses must have a long-term vision to offer delight across products, services, and channels. It would best if enterprises were to be resilient in the present and future-ready. Our journey has seen us adopt a hybrid approach, harnessing technology for efficiency and accuracy while our human capital delivers incisive, personalized solutions. We call this model Motilal Oswal PHYGITAL. Intelligent Automation has played a significant role in its success. Let’s examine the challenges that inspired our thinking before we delve into the details of the solution.

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Great Complexity Needs Extreme Simplicity
To conceptualize a solution capable of scale and agility, we knew it was critical to understand our challenge’s complexity. Our audit uncovered the following areas of development:

A comprehensive channel strategy and a vast customer base meant that we have access to rich data capable of offering a wealth of insights. We needed to ensure that we were harnessing our in-house data to develop focused solutions that address our customers’ needs.
In an industry built on attention to detail, the speed of access to information is as essential as access itself. Our search led us to arrive on the need to implement a technology platform capable of unlocking intelligence across the enterprise, without an obligation to overhaul our legacy systems.
The world is constantly moving, now faster than ever before, and businesses need to be agile. That mindset needs a culture of innovation, and technology could empower that shift.
The industry now needs agility, endurance, and innovation while ensuring a seamless experience for both internal and external stakeholders. We had a specific aim, a North Star, to build a framework for all-around excellence.
  • Understanding the PHYGITAL Approach : At MOFSL, our knowledge-first mindset means we focus on knowledge, talent, processes, technology, brand, culture, and inter-segment synergies. Our constant drive towards linearity in the business sees us prioritize effectiveness and future developments.With PHYGITAL, we are combining the best of physical comfort and digital convenience to offer our stakeholders the best of speed and personalization. Having implemented a comprehensive robotic process automation (RPA) strategy with AssistEdge, we have created a service delivery model where our advisors provide highly customized solutions. Advanced technology, research, and products support the value proposition while our investment advisors focus on offering consumers valuable counsel and individual attention.
  • The Case for RPA : After extensive research, we identified RPA as the growth lever that could inject even more efficiency into our enterprise. The pace of business growth-rapid, volatile, and constant – meant that we needed to incredibly efficient. The challenge was substantial when you factor in the slow pace of development, the inefficiency of purely manual processes, and the need to cope with regulatory change while managing data from disparate sources. RPA offered a well-oiled tech machine and a single source of truth, making it the right choice for our requirement.
  • The Role of Automation in MOFSL’s Business : In consultation with EdgeVerve, we built a clear roadmap for RPA implementation using AssistEdge. Since an in-house team drives all development at MOFSL, we wanted to work with a partner capable of preparing us for autonomy. We also had the flexibility of developing mini-robots and integrating automation into the business. Once the direction was set, we rolled out an enterprise- wide implementation of AssistEdge RPA.
    Our journey was built on a foundation of democratized automation. Constant experiments on both new process design and discovery created an environment of continuous optimization. We ensured leadership buy-in at every stage of the implementation process, executing a success- driven scaling strategy.

Since AssistEdge offered a feature-rich and highly customizable solution, MOFSL’s in- house team implemented no fewer than 350 use cases with no external support. These include:

Before RPA, we would complete bank book reconciliation once a day, and the process would take three people working for 12 hours each. RPA allowed us to run reconciliation every two hours, ensuring that customers received their statement within seconds as opposed to the previous 24-hour turnaround. Now, bank statements of various banks for all accounts are downloaded and reconciled with bank books at regular intervals in an entirely automated process.
Numerous service requests from clients or business partners like GST reversal and brokerage modification are processed through RPA.
Various types of MIS like Productivity MIS, Revenue MIS, and Risk MIS are processed through RPA.
Most data requests such as client details, revenue details, login details, and even data extraction for auditors are now processed using RPA. The process, which would previously take weeks, now only requires a few hours.
RPA analyzes alerts raised by the exchange or internal AML applications and sends formatted emails to clients and business partners in the event of any suspicious activity.
We needed to sync a lot of data like client data and DP data with exchanges and depositories, and this process has been fully automated through RPA.
Full BCP and disaster recovery are seamlessly handled by leveraging RPA.
  • Measuring Success : MOFSL measures the success of the RPA implementation through a broad range of parameters. First, speed. For instance, a process like an account opening, previously used to take hours and days, and now it needs just 15 minutes. Additionally, the ability to handle high volumes and simultaneously manage multiple processes seamlessly has increased operational productivity by over 20%. RPA has also helped MOFSL achieve 100% process accuracy, eliminating the errors associated with manual intervention.
  • How RPA Has Helped MOFSL Navigate the COVID-19 Crisis : The COVID-19 pandemic saw RPA come to the fore at MOFSL as we completed a seamless transition to WFH with no business disruptions. A range of customized bots supported MOFSL’s advisors, with the digital workers providing valuable help
    in service delivery and operations. Previously, data in disparate locations, a large number of legacy applications, and a high volume of manual processes meant that agility was a challenge. With RPA, MOFSL has been able to process data in near real-time, automate manual processes, and handle legacy systems with ease, making for a smooth migration at short notice.
  • Looking to the Future : In these trying times, one thing is clear that enterprises need to be prepared to take on unforeseen challenges and respond effectively to changes in market dynamics. Intelligent technologies will be essential to this adaptability, and we believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will substantially improve the efficacy of processes such as:

      • Credit decisions:AI could help businesses process applications faster, issue credit with greater confidence, and understand risk profiles, such as delinquency probability, with more accuracy.
      • Risk management:The uncertainty of our current environment means that accurate risk assessment needs both predictive and proactive management. Predictive capabilities could help enterprises prevent risks while AI innovations such as computer vision and document analysis could unlock the hidden value, and risks, in contract clauses.
      • Trading:Data-driven investments, also known as algorithmic, quantitative, or high-frequency trading, are fast gaining popularity and could see further refinement in the near future.
      • Personalized Broking:Smart tools like chatbots get faster and more intelligent with use and could prove to be a valuable driver of customer experience. The human element remains integral to financial services, but automation and intelligence will only serve to augment human contributions.
With data now the most valuable resource in the world, companies that can harness it effectively to drive enterprise-wide intelligence will earn a competitive advantage. PHYGITAL will drive our long-term vision so we can offer our customers laser-targeted solutions delivered through immersive human interactions combined with the accuracy and extreme productivity of technology-driven resources.

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