How Bank ABB is building a modern banking workforce through automation

At Bank ABB, modernization is more than a strategy—it’s a culture. As one of the leading financial institutions in the South Caucasus, the bank serves over 2.7 million consumers and more than 17,000 corporate clients. With nearly 4,000 employees and a strong national presence, ABB’s mission is clear: make financial services more accessible, affordable, and efficient for all.

To do that, the bank needed more than just people. It needed digital counterparts.

The bank's automation journey formally began in 2024, but its foundations were laid much earlier. Bank leadership spearheaded the automation initiative and assembled the core team, looking beyond routine operations and re-imagining how technology could shoulder some of the load.

Across ABB departments, experienced professionals were dedicating considerable time to routine, manual processes.

We realized our talented staff was spending too much time on repetitive tasks. This presented a clear opportunity for improvement.

The belief was that robotic process automation (RPA) could create substantial value by allowing colleagues to concentrate on more strategic work, and a compelling case for automation’s potential impact was built.

The bank selected UiPath as its automation platform because it offered enterprise-grade reliability, scalability, and sector experience. “UiPath was the clear choice. We knew it could support both our current needs and our future ambitions,” the bank's experts concluded. The bank then launched a bid to find the right implementation partner, and Native, a digital-transformation consultancy, won the contract.

Small start, big statement

ABB started with a process that, on the surface, looked simple: card-clearing reconciliation. But behind the scenes, it was complex, and cross-functional, making it a strong candidate for demonstrating automation’s value across the business.

Every day, four people would manually check and balance the bank’s records against those of payment providers. The process took four hours and involved repeated calculations and checks across different systems.

After analyzing and optimizing the workflow, the bank built its first robot. The bot completed the reconciliation in just 10–15 minutes a day. It was right, always right, and did the job without anyone helping.

The results were encouraging. The automation streamlined manual processes significantly, and these positive outcomes were presented to ABB’s executive team. Leadership had faith in technology’s potential from the beginning. When executives saw measurable time savings and efficiency gains, their confidence was reinforced, and they continued to provide strong support for expanding automation efforts. With this backing, the team was able to accelerate progress.

By the end of 2024, ABB had five robots running more than 100 processes. Digital workers were doing the work of 53 full-time employees. One of the most impactful automations focused on compliance with the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), a global tax-transparency requirement.

Staff had been manually checking 144 data points for every new account, and it was tedious and error-prone. Now, the bot completes those checks with perfect accuracy, saving time and improving the quality of reporting. It became a practical example of how automation delivers services more efficiently and affordably.

From early success to enterprise capability

Throughout 2024, ABB's automation program matured from a promising experiment to a bank-wide capability. A team of seven dedicated professionals was established to manage and scale the effort, with a formal Centre of Excellence (CoE) being planned. The vision for this CoE is to provide a governance model that integrates risk, audit, and IT-architecture oversight from day one.

Every robot in production now runs unattended, either on schedule or overnight, whichever best aligns with business needs. The team monitors each bot from a central location and reviews its performance every month. To accelerate delivery, a growing library of reusable components has been created, saving time and ensuring consistent standards across all platforms.

But like any major change, the journey has not been friction-free. Any time new technology enters an organization, there are bound to be doubts. At first, some workers worried that automation might replace them. To tackle this, ABB held live demonstrations for every department, comparing a robot’s performance side-by-side with manual execution—it was important to show, not tell. This helped win over skeptics.

HR repositioned RPA from a threat to a tool that helps people work better. Employees began to see how automation could take care of mindless tasks so they could focus on meaningful ones. As adoption grew, so did trust. Today, many departments proactively suggest processes they would like to automate.

Of course, that cultural shift hasn’t happened by accident. It is supported by a clear commitment from leadership to invest in long-term digital transformation. Automation is seen not just as a path to efficiency but as a strategic capability that complements people and helps deliver more accessible and affordable financial services for customers.

The road ahead for ABB

With a solid foundation in place, ABB is now focused on expanding the sophistication and scale of its digital workforce. The automation team is evaluating advanced methodologies to uncover optimization opportunities and deeper insights that traditional approaches might miss. The team noted, “This will help identify improvement areas and determine the most effective interventions, whether through automation or other digital solutions.”

As part of future initiatives, a citizen developer program will empower business users to create their own automation solutions using low-code tools. This approach will enable departments to automate smaller daily tasks independently, while operating within a secure, governed environment.

When people build their own robots, they trust them more. It fosters a culture of innovation.

ABB is already experimenting with RPA alongside AI. In HR, for example, an intelligent robot helps with head-hunting and recruitment by short-listing potential candidates. Though still early, the bank is seeing great time savings.

The bank’s advice to others beginning an automation journey is straightforward: start small. Choose a visible, repeatable process where impact can be shown quickly, a short demo is better than a long business case. But planning for scale is equally important. Once value is proven, governance must be established quickly. In a regulated industry like banking, transparency, auditability, and security are non-negotiable.

What began as a single proof of concept has now evolved into an enterprise capability, with software robots working seamlessly within the business. More importantly, automation helps ABB deliver on its core mission: making banking services more accessible and affordable for everyone.