“as follows” vs “as the following”

Question

As follows sounds more correct to me, as the following sounds super wrong to me,but just wanted to hear your opinion as well on this one, is "as the following" a legit phrase when listing things that follow, for instance can you use it like this:

bank process shall be as the following:

a) something b) something else

Answer 1

I can't put my finger on the exact grammatical reason, but I know that "as the following" is not correct in this context. "As follows" is the only way I've ever heard it.

Answer 2

"As follows" is an idiom which introduces a list.

You can say "the following" as a sort of pronoun (an anaphoric noun phrase), eg

The following are all the options available:

and even

We expect some response like the following:

but it is not an idiom in the same way.

"As the following" is grammatical, but not normal.