Data Driven Personalization in Banking
Executive summary of Data Driven Personalization in Banking
Currently, we live in an era where personalization has become the norm and is expected from banks, as financial services are increasingly driven by highly customized and personalized offerings from not only traditional banks, but also neo banks, FinTech’s, digital financial providers, and even companies outside of financial services such as telcos and retail companies. These opportunities are enabled by technologies, analytic capabilities and endless user information that allow providers to create such personalized experiences that customers love.
Customers are drawn to personalized experiences and services because it makes them feel understood, valued and appreciated by the providers. Hyper-personalization on the other hand, creates an impression that customers matter on an individual level not just as a segment of customers, even though most personalization is an automated process, made possible by big data and analytics capabilities along with other rights technologies and processes.
Data collection and technology advancements have allowed companies
to collect, analyze and utilize customer data from various channels,
including internal and external, which should allow banks to make better decisions, offers and actions than ever before. Ironically, most banks still struggle to know their customers or interact with them in a timely and relevant manner – to provide the right offers to the right customers at the right time.
This is because despite the availability of infinite amounts of usable
customer data, traditional marketing segmentation techniques are based on demographic attributes such as age, income, gender, location, etc; which in return do not contribute much to highly personalized experiences that are expected by the customers. These generic and traditional demographics and geographical targeting methods are simply no longer adequate to meet customers’ expectations, which is why more and more industries including fintech are moving towards precision targeting, or better known as hyper-personalization or segment of one targeting in order to better address customer needs on an individual level rather than macro segment level.