The Hannoversche Volksbank eG, one of Germany’s largest cooperative banks, has turned robotic process automation into a practical engine for growth, data quality and operational resilience, without expanding headcount.
Based in Hanover, northern Germany, Hannoversche Volksbank eG employs just over 1,000 people and serves private and business customers across the Hanover–Celle–Hildesheim economic region.
With a balance sheet total of just over €6.6 billion, the cooperative credit institution is among the largest Volksbanken in Germany and expects further growth.
That expansion, however, had to be delivered without increasing pressure on already stretched back-office teams.
“There are many monotonous, time-consuming tasks, which do not offer any added value and also decrease the data quality as a result of errors made during the data input,” explained Marco Dierkesmann, Prokurist and Head of Market Service at Hannoversche Volksbank.
“We therefore wanted to make the processes for collecting data more efficient, create more volume with the same staff, speed up processing and improve data quality,” he added.
“All this with our own staff without being dependent on an external service provider in the long run. That’s how we came across the topic of automation and Robotic Process Automation.”
After an eight-week evaluation period at the end of 2018, the bank selected UiPath as its RPA platform, driven by expectations of a fast return on investment and the need for tools that business and IT teams could jointly own.
“UiPath has an application for which I don’t have to be a computer scientist, but for which a good knowledge of standard IT topics is sufficient. It was very important to us that we could quickly learn it ourselves with our own staff,” Dierkesmann noted.
Implementation phase
Implementation began in early 2019, with an interdisciplinary RPA team formed from IT-savvy bankers who understood both the core banking system and operational processes.
“In the beginning, we had developed a management tool ourselves. But since the number of software robots has now risen to over 50, we now control the operation with the Orchestrator,” Dierkesmann disclosed.
For QA and software testing teams in financial services, Hannoversche Volksbank’s approach offers a clear example of how automation can improve process quality while reducing operational risk.
Many of the automated processes sit directly in production workflows that previously depended on repetitive manual data entry, an obvious source of errors, rework and compliance exposure.
“The first software robot was programmed within two days. So we were able to quickly show the management and the employees what a robot is capable of,” Dierkesmann continued.
“Our colleagues save themselves 6,000 to 7,000 monotonous tasks per year with the potential sources of error that can occur with manual processing. This was a real breakthrough for marketing the topic of RPA in-house,” he was pleased to say.
That first “door opener” robot automated the process of changing loan counter-accounts, a task triggered thousands of times a year through customer emails.
Instead of navigating multiple system steps manually, staff now hand the task to the robot, significantly reducing processing time and error risk.
“In 85% of the current cases this is conducted by a software robot. In this way we were able to handle the significant increase in workload over the last few years with the existing capacities,” Dierkesmann added, referring to garnishment and seizure processing, an area with strict regulatory and operational requirements.
“For us, RPA is not a ‘one-hit wonder’ with short-term ROI achievement, but we create sustainable improvement with robotic process automation.””.
– Marco Dierkesmann
The bank claims it has also seen measurable productivity gains in customer onboarding and digital access processes.
“One minute saves us one euro. With the software robots, we not only reduce costs, but also show the sales staff that they gain more time for direct customer contact with the help of RPA,” Dierkesmann said.
Beyond transactional automation, Hannoversche Volksbank has deployed list-based robots to handle large-scale data adjustments and regulatory reporting tasks, including AnaCredit submissions to the Bundesbank. These robots process thousands of records consistently, removing the need for additional staffing while improving data accuracy.
“We first have to prepare this table in order to be able to continue working with it. These are always the same activities,” Dierkesmann pointed out. “Since a list robot now takes care of that, we didn’t have to create a new position for it.”
From a QA perspective, the bank’s results underline the role of automation as a quality control mechanism, not just a cost lever. Automated execution has reduced error rates, stabilised processes and absorbed natural staff fluctuation without degrading service levels.
“We have achieved our most important business goal: growth and more volume with the same capacities with the existing staff,” Dierkesmann said.
“For us, RPA is not a ‘one-hit wonder’ with short-term ROI achievement, but we create sustainable improvement with robotic process automation.”
Looking ahead, the bank is extending its automation strategy into document understanding and AI-assisted processing, combining RPA with text recognition technologies. Identity verification is one of the first use cases, removing the need for manual transcription and further tightening data quality controls at the point of entry.
“We exchange software robots with each other or support other banks with our experience as enablers in tackling the topic of RPA. This allows us to expand our business segment,” Dierkesmann concluded.
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