Deutsche Bank announces they are will reduce 18,000 with robots (Business Insider Article). DB argues that in their test they
machine learning tools helped to save "680,000 hours of manual work" and that it "so far used bots to process 5 million transactions in its corporate bank and perform 3.4 million checks within its investment bank."
DB has bigger problems like staying in business and frankly this is how you do it. Automate, automate, automate. For those looking to copy you will need a few things.
- Economy of scale (many transactions)
- People doing the paperwork
Both of these factors DB has in volume. As you automate, your data and processes get cleaner and more reliable. As that reliability increases, then Machine Learning (ML) gets involved with the holy grail being Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI will take a while to get there but the improvements you get from Automation (robots) & ML are exponential improvements.
Better to build the ark before it rains. For DB, the flood waters may be raising too fast. But they are moving.