In the current economic context, the leading financial institutions are directing their efforts to developing capacities to efficiently manage the Personal Banking customer segment. This segment has clearly differentiated needs and contributes high margins to the income statement without incurring high risks, which is why entities are generating commercial capabilities and differentiated product and service offerings to attract and develop these customers.

The specialization of entities has caused significant growth in the number of managed Personal Banking customers. Although the very definition of the minimum liquid equity required of this segment varies significantly between entities, in recent years, and mainly due to the economic situation, the requirements have been relaxed, which has led to the number of customers continuing to increase at a strong rate until the 2.2 million customers.

The balance between the binomial service cost / profitability is difficult to obtain in this customer segment. On the one hand, the expected profitability does not justify the investment in the individualized commercial capacity or in the specialized advice dedicated to the Private Banking segment. On the other hand, Customer Management techniques applied to the mass market are also not capable of generating the desired differentiation.

Cognodata has developed a series of solutions to successfully develop the Personal Banking business, which incorporate some of the Customer Management techniques used in the mass market and which allow improvements in the income statement of over 20% and a very significant impact. positive in customer loyalty.

The contribution of differential value of this innovative methodology is based on the migration of clients, selective capture and specialized management:

1. Migration and acquisition of Personal Banking clients

To improve the efficiency of the acquisition processes, Cognodata has developed a methodology that is based on the client’s vision and the optimization of processes.

The migration of clients is based on a segmentation of “upgrades” that determines which clients must be migrated to the segment based on their current and potential business. One of the underlying principles in the Personal Banking business is that the entity should aspire to have a very high portfolio share for each of its clients.

The first year after the migration is a critical window of opportunity to capture this share of the portfolio, and for this it is necessary to carry out a welcome commercial protocol by segment, prioritizing customers with the greatest potential. The commercial follow-up of the linkage evolution of the clients of each manager completes an efficient migration system.

Customer acquisition: This methodological approach relies on the involvement of specialized teams in generating a factory of appointments with potential customers by telephone, which will ultimately be derived and captured by managers specialized in this segment.

The main levers that make it possible to significantly increase the efficiency of the recruitment process are:

  • Analysis and monitoring of eight key parameters of commercial effectiveness by agent and continuous training to achieve a homogeneous level among agents.
  • Design of arguments through the design of experiments, which allows identifying the best way to communicate the value proposition by segment to get the appointment.
  • Selection of the target audience to identify those customers with a greater propensity to be captured through the combination of various external databases.

The methodology developed takes into account the follow-up and protocol of commercial action on clients who have shown interest but who have not been initially captured.

The impact of this methodology on the level of non-customer appointment bookings in a six-week period is shown below:

2. Specialized customer management

2.1 Commercial systematics

The commercial system for Personal Banking is based on four main pillars:

  • Training and coaching: consisting of the selection of managers with sufficient skills to serve this segment, initial training and continuous training plan through coaching activities during the monitoring and control of activities.
  • Commercial planning: consisting of the deployment of objectives by manager, campaign planning, assignment of objectives by client and task planning.
  • Definition of the commercial style: consisting of the distribution of commercial time between acquisition vs. development, proactive vs. reactive, sale vs. relationship, the definition of the customer relationship model and the action protocol for each commercial action.
  • Implementation of a leadership style, with monitoring and control of hierarchical activities, performance evaluation and motivation of managers.

It is essential that managers understand the balance that must be struck between individualized management and the mass customization that customer intelligence allows.

Multi-channel strategies must allow meeting the differentiated needs of each segment based on its value, potential and multi-channel profile. The commercial system of Personal Banking managers must be aligned with the rest of the multi-channel activity.

Personal Banking managers must internalize the power of having a customer segmentation in terms of life cycle, need for advice and potential in the form of propensity to acquire new products until reaching the ideal basket. The commercial action must be aimed at identifying those actions that will generate a greater return to the commercial effort.

2.2. Business Intelligence

Commercial intelligence is one of the cornerstones for achieving the service differentiation required in Personal Banking, as well as achieving high portfolio shares while containing costs.

The customer metrics that require specialized development for this segment are:

  • Segmentation of ‘upgrades’: defines the minimum levels of profitability, balances, financial assets and potential necessary to identify those clients to migrate from the mass market to Personal Banking.
  • Strategic segmentation: defines the segments with differentiated needs that will require specific products and services, adapted sales systems and specialized campaigns.
  • Customer and potential value, understood as the margin generated by each customer and the potential margin that can be generated during their expected life in the entity and therefore closely associated with customer loyalty. These metrics are very useful for defining customer strategies in several dimensions:
  • Tactical customer metrics such as the next best buy (NBS), propensity to contract products and services, propensity to lose resources and commercial alarms based on customer events that allow defining tactical actions adapted to each segment. Just as the metrics described above define the strategy and the potential, these metrics define the way to capture said potential based on the segment, allowing the commercial activity to be focused where the greatest return and customer satisfaction are generated.

Technological support, in the form of a specialized client file and commercial agenda, becomes key in Personal Banking, since it allows managers to know the commercial opportunities of their portfolio, the risk of disassociation of clients, incorporate valuable data for management such as financial and non-financial tastes and preferences, etc. An intelligent alert system prioritized over the commercial agenda will further enhance the capabilities of the tool, helping the manager to provide a personalized service to a broad client portfolio.

Both the customer file and the commercial alerts require an intense adaptation based on those used for the mass market, since a greater emphasis is required on investment products, evolution of portfolio valuations, ideal basket based on financial sophistication profile, etc.

2.3. Datamart comercial

Cognodata has synthesized the information needs of more than 30 financial entities to build the Commercial Datamart solution, as well as a parameterization and construction methodology that allows satisfying the typical information needs:

  • Preparation of segmented business plans, dashboards and reports.
  • Launch and optimization of campaigns, target audiences and alarms.
  • Construction of predictive models and customer metrics.

The Commercial Datamart section related to Personal Banking contains a greater number of metrics for investment savings products, risk profiles, financial sophistication and customer interests, specific customer intelligence metrics, alarms and potential customers.

3. Conclusion

The number of Personal Banking customers has experienced sustained growth of 15% in recent years. This segment generates a much higher than average level of income and represents a much-needed source of liquidity in the current economic environment.

In an environment of growing specialized competition, the great challenge for entities is to strike a balance between service costs and profitability, adapting customer strategies from private banking and the mass market.

General approaches are no longer sufficient in a market with a high degree of development and many specialized players. Specialized capacities adapted to the needs of each entity must be generated:

  • The processes of migration and customer acquisition.
  • The commercial system supported by customer management tools.
  • The commercial intelligence of Personal Banking differentiated from that of the mass market.