I had lunch today with a client's regional manager. We discussed many things, but one thing he told me stuck... they used average balances to determine their highest priority customers. Many of my comrades in the community FI blogosphere feed on data, some good, some bad. But using average customer balances to determine your best customers is unfortunately very common... bad use of data.
Similar to the above, a client of ours requested that my firm identify their top 100 customers by coterminous spread. We distributed the list. They reviewed it quizzically. The senior management team did not know half of the customers on the list. Their perception of their best customers also revolved around balances.
Financial institutions have in their possession more information about their customers than any other industry, with the possible exception of medical. How do we collect it, parse it, and use it? My guess is we don't do a very good job of harnessing this information to identify top customers, profitable products, or strategic opportunities.
I teach at the ABA School of Bank Marketing Management. One of my courses is Profitability & Strategic Issues. I distribute a questionnaire to determine what information students' FIs use to make strategic decisions. The below chart identifies their response to one of the questions.
Forty three percent of respondents reported that their institution did not use marketing data for strategic planning. Another 11% reported using it sometimes. This is astounding but consistent with past years' responses. Marketing data about customers, products, and markets should be critical to strategic decisions. Yet frequently, this data remains within the confines of the Marketing Department. Trapped as bits and bytes in the FIs MCIF or similar system, only to be busted loose to help with the next product promotion.
Aside from information trapped within our core processing and ancillary systems, there is ample data available for strategic decision making in the public domain and primary research conducted by industry professionals. Are we identifying the necessary data points to make important decisions?
For example, if considering branching, one would think the key data points are as follows: Are their enough of the types of customers within a certain community that we typically target and have success with? How many competitors are in the community and what is their branch size? Are branch deposits growing or declining in the community? Are businesses growing and in what industries? Are new housing developments on the horizon and are average home prices increasing? Are branch sites available in locations with adequate traffic?
Most if not all of the data mentioned above is either publicly available or can be obtained from private sources such as local realtors and from the FIs own marketing databases. But if your experience is similar to mine, you understand many branch decisions are made based on anecdotal data or because somebody we know owns the prospective branch property.
As succeeding in financial services becomes more challenging, making informed strategic decisions will be critical to our success. The days of throwing grass into the air to determine wind direction is no longer adequate. Important information need not be out of our reach. Much can be obtained freely via public sources, or can be mined from our own systems. When making decisions with long-term impact, FIs must identify the information needed to make informed decisions and collect and analyze it. Successful execution of the strategies to lead us into a successful future depend on it.
How does your FI use data to make strategic decisions?
~ Jeff
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