In international comparison, German banks and insurance companies have extremely high cost ratios. Many financial institutions are therefore planning to intensify the application to their own processes of principles conceived and used in factory processes. The basic intention here is to standardize, automate, and outsource highly repetitive processes. In contrast to the common outsourcing of general business processes such as property management, accounting, or human resources, this so-called “factoring” focuses on the financial service providers’ core processes. The spotlight is on processes in the departments responsible for consumer credit management, stock trading, building loan contracts, and personal liability insurance. What these processes all have in common is that they include both standardized and individualized components. The stock trading process, for example, can itself be automated, but the customer counseling beforehand is highly individualized and contributes strongly to the sum of value created. Factoring does more than just restructure business processes; it usually leads to the reorientation of the organization towards processes as well.  

Factoring raises new challenges for banks and insurance companies. A mass of multimedial information flows between the factory, which is often run by an external provider, the branches, and the individual divisions or units. This information includes e-mails, forms, contractual documents, telephone calls, appointments, bonus details, and customer contact data as well as new product structures and the pertinent sales processes. One example: insurance customers may surf on the home page and find a particular product which interests them. They can then use a push-to-talk function to let the service center know that they would like to be phoned immediately by customer service.