Banco Popular Dominicano multiplies risk analysis 7X with Microsoft Power Platform

In a bank where every process, control, and decision must be traceable and auditable, operational risk management is not just a function: it is a critical system for the entire organization.

At Banco Popular Dominicano, that system needed to make an exponential leap to continue advancing.

The traditional model—based on periodic reviews and samples—allowed only a part of the universe of risks to be covered. Teams were manually analyzing documents, validating controls, and detecting issues, in cycles that could take months.

With an operation spanning thousands of processes, the volume and complexity of operational risk grew faster than the traditional model's ability to oversee it. As the bank scaled, manual and partial reviews were no longer sufficient to ensure real-time visibility and control.

In banking, every control must leave evidence, every change must be traceable, and every decision must be explainable, both to respond to audits and regulators and to sustain the confidence of the business itself.

"There are more and more risks, more controls, and more processes. Without the use of artificial intelligence and automation tools, it would be impossible to maintain effective monitoring and management of the risks we face," explains Felipe Suárez, Executive Vice President of Integrated Risk Management.

This wasn't just a matter of efficiency, it was structural: the approach made it impossible to achieve full coverage and respond to relevant changes in time, even with an expanded team.

Rethinking the model: From manual process to institutional capacity

Faced with this scenario, the bank, which has innovation among its organizational values, decided to change the model completely.

The question was no longer how to make manual review more efficient, it was how to transform risk monitoring into a continuous, consistent, and scalable process.

This change was anchored in a broader strategic decision that runs across the bank’s institutional guidelines: treating AI not as a trend, but as a capability to transform the way the bank operates.

AURA was not implemented as a pilot or as an isolated solution. It was integrated as an institutionalized operating model within the bank, incorporating AI into the daily flow of the risk area.

AURA: Agents, automation, and real-time monitoring

From this convergence between operational need, strategic vision, and technological capabilities, AURA was born.

AURA is an ecosystem of agents that automates and improves operational risk management at Banco Popular. It combines Microsoft Copilot Studio capabilities for agent creation with Microsoft Power Platform—including Microsoft Power Automate for flow orchestration and Microsoft Power BI for monitoring—along with tools such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Excel, SQL, and Microsoft SharePoint, all integrated within the bank's environment.

AURA operates as an orchestrated, multi-agent ecosystem in which specialized agents—documentary, risk analysis, and conversational—interpret events, execute analyses, and coordinate responses within an integrated model.

Copilot Studio enabled the bank to design and operate an ecosystem of agents capable of interpreting changes, executing validations, and coordinating actions without constant manual intervention. More importantly, it enabled business experts—without relying on technical teams—to create, adjust, and scale these agents, something that was not possible with traditional approaches.

At the operational level, the solution works as a coordinated architecture. Power Automate orchestrates workflows, triggering processes when events occur such as changes in matrices, documents, or controls, and managing the routing, validation, and notification of each case.

Power BI consolidates and visualizes key metrics—such as system stability, process volume, and risk pipeline health—by providing continuous monitoring. On this basis, agents created in Copilot Studio interpret events and execute actions, integrating different sources and systems within a unified model.

Teams interact with AURA directly from Microsoft Teams, integrating risk management into their daily workflow and enabling real-time event, validation, and action management.

Unlike the previous model, AURA doesn't wait for scheduled reviews, it acts as each event occurs within the bank, automatically triggering analyses, validations, and alerts for the risk team.

In practice, AURA operates on multiple critical scenarios.

For example, in the event of a change in a procedure or document, the system automatically triggers an impact analysis, validates associated controls, and notifies the appropriate managers. In other cases, it reviews large volumes of documentation, tens of thousands of items per week, to identify methodological inconsistencies or misalignments. It also facilitates the early detection of deviations in processes, allowing action to be taken before they escalate to greater risks.

"Every time a change occurs, the system automatically analyzes it. We no longer rely on manual reviews," explains Juan Jiménez, Risk Integration Manager.

The system identifies deviations, compares information, and proposes improvement actions in real time, substantially increasing the bank's visibility and responsiveness.

"We used to have partial visibility, our response was delayed. Today we know what is happening across the bank and in real time," says Mario Jara, Vice President of Operational Risk.

Scaling with control: Governed and auditable AI

In a regulated environment, automation is not enough. The solution developed by Banco Popular Dominicano's Operational Risk team had to be reliable, governed, and auditable.

For this reason, AURA was designed from the beginning with clear principles, an auditable control system and a clear decision-making scheme. "AURA analyzes and proposes, but the analyst has to evaluate and decide," explains Jara, highlighting the human role as the last factor for decision making.

This human-in-the-loop approach allows AI to scale without losing control.

Alongside the security and scalability features of Microsoft's solutions, Popular designed a governance architecture for complete traceability: controlling access, differentiating roles, and monitoring every process in real time—including through supervisory agents that oversee the entire ecosystem.

Traceability is a core component of the model. As Juan Jiménez explains, “everything the system does is recorded. We can audit every process and every result.”

Measuring impact: From partial visibility to full control

The impact was not incremental. It was structural.

The bank went from covering approximately 40% of its risk universe to achieving full coverage. At the same time, it increased its analytical capacity sevenfold and significantly reduced the manual operational burden.

Thus, processes that previously took weeks or months are now executed continuously, allowing hundreds of cases to be analyzed daily and large volumes of documentation to be processed.

With this visibility, Banco Popular was not only able to scale its operation, but also transform how it measures performance, quality, and consistency in its control processes.

The result is a set of metrics that reflect a structural change in the way we work:

Coverage and scale
100% operational risk coverage
7X more analytical capacity

Operational efficiency
70% less manual operating load
40% of time freed up for value analysis

Quality and consistency
95%+ guideline-to-process alignment
98% methodological accuracy

Volume and processing
80,000 documents processed per week
More than 300 cases analyzed per day

AURA strengthened the Operational Risk team's ability to operate within a regulated environment—ensuring full traceability, auditability, and consistency across controls. This not only improves the quality of supervision but also reduces the risk of compliance failures and strengthens the bank's operational resilience.

This change is reflected in how teams work. By automating operational and review tasks, analysts can now focus on other analytical tasks that bring much more value to the organization, such as understanding the root causes of problems, improving their controls, and anticipating risks.

Innovation from the business: Democratization of development

One of the differential aspects of the case is how the bank built it.

"This is not a technology project; it is a risk management project, built with tools we already have available,” explains Suárez.

The bank enabled an approach in which process experts (the risk analysts), without relying on IT teams, were able to design, iterate, and evolve the solution using low-code tools from the Microsoft ecosystem.

This democratization model made it possible to accelerate development, aligning it with the real needs of the business and scaling adoption among the bank's teams.

A scalable model for the industry

Banco Popular Dominicano's model was built on standard tools from the Microsoft ecosystem, which allows its scalability and replicability in other organizations in the sector.

This positions AURA not only as an internal solution, but as a model applicable to other institutions facing similar challenges.

It is, in fact, a landmark case in the Latin American financial sector, the only multi-agent solution to date built with Microsoft AI tools by financial-industry professionals who don't come from technology teams, which adds extra weight to what Banco Popular has achieved.

A new standard for risk management

Today, AURA not only optimizes the operation. It redefines how the bank understands and manages risk.

"There are things that we, when we started this, had never imagined. There are things that we can do today that were impossible before," explains Jara.

The model evolved from reactive to proactive logic, where teams not only detect problems, but can anticipate and prevent deviations before they occur.

This approach not only transforms the bank's internal operation but also positions it as a benchmark in the application of AI to risk management within the financial sector.

In an environment where many institutions still depend on traditional models, Banco Popular Dominicano demonstrates its capacity for innovation and teamwork, advancing toward a continuous supervision model powered by AI—and setting itself apart from its peers.

AURA is not an incremental improvement, it's a substantial shift in how risk is managed: from partial reviews to continuous supervision, from delayed reaction to real-time action.

Far from being a finished project, AURA continues to evolve. The bank is expanding its reach into new areas, adding more users, and extending it to other processes, with the goal of consolidating this way of working as an organization-wide standard.

About Banco Popular Dominicano

Banco Popular Dominicano is the leading private-sector bank in the Dominican Republic, with a decisive role in financing its economic development and modernization. As the largest private financier in the country, it promotes strategic sectors such as tourism, SMEs, companies, energy, commerce, and industry. In the technological field, it leads the digital transformation of Dominican banking, with millions of digital customers, a high adoption of mobile channels and strong investments in technological infrastructure. Its strategy integrates innovation, financial inclusion and sustainability, with robust support for the energy transition, financial education, and social and environmental development, consolidating it as a key player for the country's sustainable growth.

Find out more about Banco Popular Dominicano on its website and social networks on Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, and Youtube.