Manual contract processing costs companies GBP 10 mln/year, study finds

The average loss is over GBP 10 million a year, while three in ten (31%) finance companies lose GBP 1 million or more a year. The survey of 100 finance professionals, manager and above, also found lack of automation is resulting in wasted resource, with financial services companies spending an average of 78 hours per month processing agreements and on one in ten (13%) spending over 200 hours per month - equivalent to one working month.

Significant findings from the report include:

• Only 11% of financial services companies have a fully automated process for managing their agreements.

• Only one in twenty (7%) agreements have access restricted to the named owners

• The vast majority of financial services companies (93%) have experienced issues as a result of non-automation and 47% have suffered financial losses as a result

Issues cited include human error, such as incorrect document disposal (56%) and time delays to projects (49%). A similar proportion (47%) have suffered financial losses as a result of manual processes, while a further two in five (43%) have seen agreement crossover, with people signing different versions of the same document. Just over a quarter have suffered non compliance (30%) or other legal issues (25%).