Inside China’s First Bank to Earn Top‑Tier RPA Maturity Rating

RPA Innovation Industry Summit

On April 16, 2021, the RPA Innovation Industry Summit (RIIS) was launched, jointly hosted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and the Zhongguancun Smart AI Industry Alliance, and organized by the RPA Industry Promotion Alliance (RUIDA). The event gathered experts and enterprises from finance, telecommunications, and the internet sectors to discuss RPA’s efficient empowerment and future prospects.

Evaluation Results

The summit announced the first round of maturity assessment results for CAICT’s RPA system and tool applications. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) received the highest 3+ rating for its RPA service platform, becoming the first bank in China to pass the system and tool application maturity evaluation at this level.

Interview with ICBC

Q: Please introduce yourself, your organization, and the RPA system and tools involved in the assessment.

Gong Guangqing, Assistant General Manager of ICBC’s Software Development Center, explained that the center, founded in 1996, now has over 5,600 staff across seven cities and focuses on application development, technology research, service support, and operations. The bank’s enterprise‑level RPA platform provides intelligent digital labor for the entire industry, quickly responding to demand changes, improving operational efficiency, standardizing processes, strengthening risk control, and accelerating digital transformation.

Q: How do you feel about achieving the 3+ level, the highest domestic maturity rating?

Gong expressed pride in being among the first enterprises to pass the RPA standard system and tool assessment at the 3+ level, confirming ICBC’s leading technology and large‑scale application capabilities, and providing valuable experience for further expanding the platform.

Q: What motivated your participation in the RPA standard assessment?

He noted that rapid digital‑economy growth has made internal information systems increasingly complex, creating strong demand for automation and intelligence. RPA can quickly automate processes, reduce labor costs, and accelerate digital transformation. Participating in the standard assessment helps identify gaps, promote implementation, and expand RPA’s depth and breadth across industries.

Q: Which metrics demonstrate your RPA technology’s application level?

ICBC completed RPA research and platform construction in 2019, pioneering large‑scale RPA use in Chinese banks. The digital workforce now operates across more than 300 business‑line scenarios—including operations, cards, credit, finance, and HR—covering over 400 digital workers and saving more than 360 person‑years of labor.

Q: What are the biggest benefits of RPA for your enterprise, and what are your next steps?

RPA replaces low‑value repetitive work, boosts operational efficiency, accelerates business processing, improves customer satisfaction, and standardizes workflows to mitigate operational risk. ICBC plans to integrate AI with its RPA platform, creating intelligent digital labor that combines “machine intelligence” with “human intelligence,” extending RPA’s application boundaries and driving intelligent hyper‑automation.

Q: How do you view the future development of RPA technology?

Gong believes that while current RPA relies on structured data and fixed rules, many real‑world scenarios involve unstructured data such as documents and images. The inevitable trend is deep integration of RPA with AI, evolving toward intelligent hyper‑automation and enabling “RPA+” comprehensive empowerment.

RPA Standard Overview

RPA lacks comprehensive standards for product features, delivery, operation, security, and trust, limiting industry growth. To address this, CAICT launched RPA standardization research, collaborating with industry players to develop China’s first full‑process RPA standard system, now completed for the system and tool sections. The RPA Industry Promotion Alliance has officially started the evaluation and testing work.

Contact

For RPA standard evaluation inquiries, contact CAICT representative Zhang Meng at 130‑6336‑0230 or email [email protected].