The impacts of robotic process automation on accounting of banking entities based in Luxembourg.

Abstract

In the last decade, many technologies have emerged. They have formed the industry 4.0. But a major element of this industry is automation. This thesis focuses on the RPA technology: the robotic process automation. The objective of this thesis was to analyse the impacts of RPA in accounting in a banking entity based in Luxembourg. RPA is a technology that allows to automate certain tasks and processes. Indeed, this technology has the ability to imitate humans and thus reproduce repetitive and routine-based tasks. These impacts were analysed in a scientific context. To carry out the empirical study, nine interviews were conducted. The interviewees were selected from banks and insurance companies based in Luxembourg, as well as a Big Four and an RPA vendor. At the end, a discussion was conducted to compare the impacts known from the scientific world with the impacts established during the empirical research. The highlighted impacts were mainly related to the question of cost efficiency. Indeed, RPA seems to have positive impacts concerning the accuracy, ability to work 24/24 hours 7/7 days and the avoidance of repetitive tasks. Furthermore, other impacts have been emphasised concerning the security of information and privacy due the use of RPA. Finally, two challenges have been analyse, the fear of the accountant to be replaced by these virtual robots and the critical aspect to spot the right process to automate. To conclude, RPA has a lot of impacts on a firm and it seems that it will be more present in the future.