The financial sector has historically been more reluctant than other industries to innovate technologically. Eliciting firm trust from their clients is crucial, and therefore many measures that they perceive as a potential threat to security are studiously avoided. However, in recent years the success of online and mobile banking has paved the way for a more exploratory approach to modern technology. At the core of this new approach is robotic process automation, or RPA. Banks, insurance firms, asset managers and so on are now looking to invest heavily in robotics to automate the most repetitive, mundane back-office tasks – thus ensuring efficient, accurate and cost-effective completion of those tasks, and freeing up employees to focus on more engaging work that relies on human instinct.