Blue Prism Beds in at SS&C

By Spencer Izard & Nick Mayes

When financial software group SS&C acquired Blue Prism in 2022, it took out one of the three front-runners in the robotic process automation (RPA) software field.

This week, PAC caught up with some of the leadership of the Blue Prism business, who provided an update on how it is bedding in as part of the wider $5.6bn software group and how artificial intelligence – and specifically Gen AI – fit in to its roadmap.

SS&C recently reported numbers for its second quarter ending June, which showed that the Blue Prism business continued to grow at a rate in excess of 7%, with an annual run-rate of more than $200m. By way of contrast, UiPath (which along with Automation Anywhere, made up the trio of RPA leaders), reported a sales rise of 16% in its most recently-reported quarter.

Part of the rationale behind the acquisition was to apply Blue Prism’s technology across the rest of SS&C’s operations, and the vendor claims to have achieved cost savings of $100m by processing more than 1,000 processes in areas such as risk & compliance, fund accounting reconciliations and customer onboarding. SS&C boss Bill Stone is aiming to have up to 15,000 digital workers deployed across the business within the next couple of years.

During the call, due partly to SS&C’s extensive background in the financial services sector, Blue Prism discussed a range of areas where they already see significant interest and use cases for generative AI (GenAI). PAC was encouraged to hear how using GenAI to enhance a range of core operational processes in the areas of compliance and risk management are key focus areas for them.

For many years, PAC has witnessed banks investing in technologies to automate compliance processes because they are often complex and time-consuming due to the volume of transactions banks have to process within each bank channel (e.g., retail, corporate, investment, and private). As compliance regulations evolve or a bank creates a financial product that has to comply with one or more regulations, degrees of operational friction are incurred. In addition, as digital banking channels democratise access for many types of bank customers to a plethora of sophisticated financial products, the scale of compliance activities is increasing in both volume and velocity. PAC believes that GenAI provides vital capabilities to support compliance teams in operating at greater scale, complexity, and sophistication by generating risk assessments, reviewing and updating compliance policies and procedures, generating compliance reports, and responding to regulatory queries.

Blue Prism also discussed risk management, which is typically a complex and challenging range of processes with volumes and velocity of activity that often outstrip a department’s ability to meet demand. Banks have already been leveraging automation technologies to stem the tide of risk exposure due to the introduction of more sophisticated and varied digital banking services. Due to the highly sensitive nature of this banking function and the potential for false positives when investigating fraud and other types of violations, this is where PAC believes GenAI, partnered with explainable AI (XAI), capabilities can advise members of risk and fraud detection teams at a scale that is currently overwhelming many such teams. As know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) policies and procedures are essential to banks managing the risk and verifying customers, clients, and suppliers, GenAI can be used to screen relevant transactions for potential risk violations to aid in mitigating risks before they occur. The technology can also be used to monitor market data and customer behaviour for patterns that could impact risk and report back with a range of risk scenarios and potential mitigations. The interactive nature of GenAI also provides an invaluable means to train employees on risk management by ensuring they are aware of risks and how to address them.

Seeing Blue Prism focus on the role of GenAI as a tool to optimise a range of financial services workflows and operating models was encouraging to PAC because this is the focus that the organisations we engage with want to hear about. GenAI is not a technology-first conversation but rather, from a PAC perspective, a data, business operating model, governance, and cultural change conversation that requires deep levels of integration and automation, which Blue Prism seems to understand well.