Automated invoice processing in the credit appraisal process for corporate customers is a breakthrough strategy that helps Banks shorten the loan appraisal cycle from weeks to just a few days, enhancing credit quality and improving risk control efficiency. The verification of the authenticity and scale of a customer’s business operations through thousands of invoices and financial documents is a major bottleneck, consuming time and posing the risk of manual errors.
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Operational Reality at the Bank: The Bottleneck in Loan Appraisal
The Core Role of Invoices in Credit Risk Control
For Bank loan appraisal operations, especially for corporate customers (SME and Corporate), the invoice is not just an accounting document but also living evidence of the business’s operational status:
- Verification and Authentication: Invoice processing (incoming and outgoing) helps the Bank verify and authenticate:
- Revenue/Expense Scale: Accurately assessing the actual scale of operations, ensuring it is not inflated.
- Transaction Authenticity: Determining the reasonableness and validity of sales and purchase transactions recorded in the financial statements.
- Continuity and Stability: Analyzing the flow of goods/services through invoices over time to assess the stability of business operations.
- Risk Control: From invoice data, the Bank can evaluate the ability to repay the loan, control credit risk, and verify the purpose of loan utilization, preventing the risk of fraud or misuse of funds.
The Manual Burden in Invoice Processing
Despite the core role of the invoice, the invoice processing workflow in loan appraisal at most Banks remains heavily manual and complex:
- Scattered Collection: Appraisers must collect a variety of documents (contracts, goods receipt notes, handover records) and invoice files (PDF, XML, scanned paper documents) from customers.
- Manual Data Entry and Analysis:
- Data Entry: Staff must manually enter key information (invoice number, date, tax code, total value) into the appraisal system/Excel for aggregation.
- Cross-Checking: Each invoice must be manually opened and cross-checked against related documents and financial statements to look for inconsistencies.
- Validity Lookup: Staff must access the General Department of Taxation website to look up invoice validity (checking invoice status, business status).
- Risk and Errors: The high volume of work leads to the risk of errors in data entry (mistyping figures), missing high-risk invoices, and extending the loan appraisal time.
Actual Data on the Appraisal Burden
- Appraisal Time: For a large corporate loan, invoice and document processing can account for 40.0% of the initial loan appraisal time, extending it by 3 – 5 working days.
- Data Volume: A medium-sized corporate loan file can include hundreds to thousands of incoming and outgoing invoices from the last 1-2 years.
- Personnel Cost: Large Banks must maintain a substantial team of appraisers just to perform time-consuming document analysis and cross-checking, leading to high operating costs.
Automated Invoice Processing Solution in Credit Appraisal
The invoice processing automation solution using Hyperautomation is a key tool helping Banks transform the loan appraisal process, increasing approval speed and enhancing the quality of the credit portfolio.
Applied Technologies: RPA, IDP, OCR
The solution combines intelligent technologies to fully automate the entire process from receipt to analysis:
- IDP (Intelligent Document Processing) and OCR: Extracts data from unstructured documents (scanned invoices, PDF financial statements, handover records).
- RPA (Robotic Process Automation): Performs repetitive, multi-system tasks such as invoice lookup on the TCT, and data entry into the Core Banking system/Credit Management System.
- AI (Artificial Intelligence) & Machine Learning: Analyzes and assesses risk (Risk Scoring), detects abnormal invoice patterns (Anomaly Detection), and automatically classifies and summarizes data for the appraiser.
Detailed Process Description: Before and After Automation
| Before Automation (Manual) | ||
| Step | Manual Description | Estimated Time |
| Collection & Classification | Receive paper/file documents from the Customer. The appraiser manually opens each file, organizing by document type. | 1 – 2 days |
| Extraction & Data Entry | The appraiser manually enters invoice data fields into Excel/System. | 2 – 3 days |
| Validity Lookup | The appraiser accesses the General Department of Taxation website, manually entering each invoice code to check the status. | 1 – 2 days |
| Cross-Checking & Analysis | The appraiser uses Excel to manually cross-check invoice data against financial statements and other documents. | 3 – 5 days |
| Total: | 7 – 12 days |
| After Automation (Using RPA/IDP) | ||
| Step | Automated Description | Estimated Time |
| Collection & Extraction | Robot/IDP automatically scans document files, extracting all data (item names, values, tax codes) into the database. | 1 – 4 hours |
| Lookup & Authentication | RPA Robot automatically looks up invoices in bulk on the TCT portal and records the authentication results. | 2 – 8 hours |
| Cross-Checking & Analysis | AI/ML automatically cross-checks all extracted data, detecting and alerting on abnormal transactions. | 1 – 4 hours |
| Reporting & Decision | The System automatically generates a summarized Credit Risk Analysis Report. The appraiser only reviews exceptions. | 4 – 8 hours |
| Total: | Under 2 days |
Superior Value of the Automated Invoice Processing Solution
The automation solution brings clear efficiency to the loan appraisal process:
| Metric | Specific Figures | Strategic Benefit |
| Appraisal Speed | Shortens the loan appraisal cycle by 70.0% – 85.0% | Helps the Bank approve and disburse quickly, enhancing customer experience and increasing competitive advantage. |
| Operating Cost | Reduces labor costs for data entry/cross-checking by 60.0% – 75.0% | Optimizes resources, reducing operating costs for the Credit division. |
| Risk Control | Increases the ability to detect abnormal transactions by 90.0% | Improves credit quality, reducing the Non-Performing Loan (NPL) ratio due to flawed appraisal. |
| Accuracy | Achieves 99.0% accuracy in extracted and entered data. | Eliminates the risk of manual errors, ensuring accurate analysis data. |
Success Story: Transforming the Invoice Processing for Loan Credit Process
The success story of invoice processing automation has proven the feasibility and effectiveness of this solution in the Banking industry.
A Major Bank Transforms its Data Analysis Process
One of Vietnam’s leading commercial joint-stock Banks, facing challenges with slow credit approval speed due to the large volume of invoices, adopted the Hyperautomation solution:
- Challenge: The loan appraisal process took an average of 10 days, with 4 days dedicated to manual data entry, invoice lookup, and document matching.
- Deployment Solution:
- Implemented a specialized IDP module to extract data from various document types (VAT invoices, GTGT invoices, receipts…).
- Used RPA Robots to automatically connect and look up invoices in bulk on the TCT.
- Applied AI/ML to automatically match invoice data with tax declaration information and financial indicators, attaching a Risk Flag to transactions showing abnormal signs.
- Results Achieved:
- Reduced the appraisal cycle to 2 days.
- The automation rate (STP Rate) for the extraction and lookup step reached 80.0%.
- Reduced appraisers’ time for manual data entry by 70.0%.
Lessons Learned
- Seamless Integration: A successful solution does not stop at extraction (IDP) but must be seamlessly integrated with valid invoice lookup (RPA on the TCT) and risk analysis (AI/ML).
- Building Invoice-Based Risk Models: Automatically processed invoice data serves as the foundation for the Bank to build Credit Scoring models based on actual transactions, which is much more accurate than relying solely on traditional financial statements.
- Change Management: The role of the appraiser shifts from data entry and matching to risk manager and decision-maker. In-depth training on using automated data for analysis is essential.
Conclusion: Automated Invoice Processing – The Future of Loan Appraisal
Automated invoice processing is a strategic transformation that helps the Banking industry completely resolve the bottleneck in the corporate loan appraisal process. By applying Hyperautomation technologies, Banks not only increase approval speed and enhance customer experience but, more importantly, improve the quality of credit risk management. This is the core factor for financial institutions to maintain a competitive advantage and achieve sustainable development in the digital age.
