4 Ways Financial Institutions Can Make Data More Actionable

Maintaining strong relationships with account holders has never been more important for financial institutions (FIs). New competition from fintech threatens account holder retention while other changes in the industry have started to erode wallet share for many traditional FIs. 

Thankfully, FIs sit on a mountain of account holder transaction data that can be used to strengthen those relationships. But making sense of that data and turning it into actionable insights is a challenge, to say the least. Core systems make it difficult to extract meaningful reports and information often gets siloed within departments. FI leaders need to find ways to execute on internal data to strengthen account holder relationships, building profitability and loyalty.

Here are four ways FIs can improve data actionability and stay competitive with better data organization, security and automation.

1. Clean Up Transaction Data

An account holder’s transaction data can be the key to understanding their behaviors and priorities in life — crucial information FIs can use to develop experiences and offerings that strengthen loyalty. But transaction data in its raw form is basically a nonsensical string of numbers and letters. Cleaning that data using a merchant payment cleansing service is the first step and can immediately:

• Provide easy-to-read transaction descriptions for online account holder portals
• Free up call center resources
• Improve chatbot performance
• Help business segments deliver more relevant account holder interactions that drive product utilization and engagement

In the long term, FIs can use clean transaction data in aggregate to build predictive models for account holder behavior. AI-powered tools like attrition modeling or cross-sell modeling can help FIs respond proactively to account holder needs and deliver experiences that drive engagement. Financial Wellness Modeling for example, can be utilized to identify members who may be experiencing financial stress, before it’s too late. Knowing which members may be struggling will allow for efficient and targeted outreach.

2. Use A Cloud-Share Application

Transferring large volumes of transaction data to a third-party for cleansing increases both cost and security risk for FIs. The more prudent route is to use a cloud-share application for merchant payment cleansing that eliminates the need to move data between systems. Because data stays within the cloud-share environment, sensitive account holder information can be better protected. Not only that, but this kind of arrangement provides seamless access to transaction enrichment solutions while saving time and money for FIs.

3. Strengthen Data Security

FIs often want to partner with third-parties for various operations like marketing automation and call center services. But account holder data inherently includes personally identifiable information (PII) that requires special protection under today’s data security regulations. That means FIs need to find a way to make account holder data shareable while still staying compliant.

This is where tokenization can be a useful data security strategy. Tokenization assigns a data value, or token, to take the place of an account holder’s sensitive data within a digital environment. That token can then be transferred and used by authorized third-parties without exposing PII. In this way, FIs can pick and choose the vendors they want to work with while protecting account holder information.

4. Automate Multichannel Marketing Activities

Acting on account holder data means actually reaching out and connecting with them in meaningful ways. To do that efficiently, FIs need to take the insights learned through merchant payment cleansing and integrate that data with a turnkey multichannel marketing solution to deliver the highest level of targeting efficiency and relevant messaging. Most importantly, the digital use cases can accelerate revenue generation for both current members and acquisition campaigns.

Automating delivery to this channel increases the capability for on-demand quick campaign building, closing the time gap for most marketers while delivering a conversion-rich form of digital marketing.For example, spend analysis could indicate that a particular account holder has started making mortgage payments to a competing FI. A marketing integration could take that information and target that account holder with a relevant refinancing offer. In other use cases, where individuals may be identified as outdoor enthusiasts based on their purchase history, marketing photography can be tweaked to reflect those interests and create a stronger connection.

The key is to achieve alignment between data insights and marketing automation to deliver account holder experiences that are compelling, timely and relevant.

Actionable Data Leads To Stronger Relationships

In today’s market, leaders at FIs need to find ways to strengthen account holder relationships and build loyalty to stay top-of-mind and top- of-wallet. By combining merchant payment cleansing with topflight data security and storage that provides seamless integrations for business operations, FIs can turn unintelligible data into actions and achieve their ultimate strategic goals.

Want to make better use of account holder data? Connect with Segmint to learn about our innovative merchant payment cleansing solution and how we help drive outstanding results for FIs.