September 5, 2024

How Personalized Engagement Drives Business Impact for Banks Across Southeast Asia

Monetizing financial transactional data is a win-win for banks and customers. Financial institutions are harnessing this asset to dramatically improve business outcomes and are experiencing huge benefits with a customer engagement rate of up to 35%, a sales conversion rate of up to 17% and 9% year-on-year growth in deposits. 

Recently, Personetics joined forces with Fintech News Singapore and invited Colin Dinn, Chief Transformation Officer of Vietcombank; Nauman Bashir, Head of Digital & Customer Value Management at Standard Chartered Bank; and Mukesh Pilania, EVP, Head of Digital Banking at Techcombank to join me in a panel discussion. We took a deep dive into the world of transactional data and the different ways that it is being leveraged, as well as looking at why and how Southeast (SE) Asia is leading in successfully monetizing this data. 

SE Asia is Leading the Way for the Banking Industry  

SE Asia is known not only for being an early adopter of global banking technology trends like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, open banking and more, but also for being a leading innovator and industry trendsetter.  

Personalized Customer Engagement 

Customer engagement has become a huge focus in this region because it benefits everyone. Personalized customer engagement can be leveraged to amplify banks’ business impact while simultaneously enhancing customers’ financial wellness. Financial institutions in SE Asia are investing in creating proactive and hyper-personalized opportunities that align with each customer’s needs, desires and value drivers, be that financial wellness, saving for a mortgage downpayment, or reducing carbon footprint. 

Financial Data-driven Solutions 

Customers’ financial transactional data is an asset that keeps on giving. There is currently a huge amount of innovation in this field which enables banks to proactively and smartly engage with their customers. This effectively drives value, strengthens loyalty through active and passive channels, and optimizes business decisions. 

United Overseas Bank (UOB) 

An example of this type of innovation is UOB, whose aim is to build the world’s most engaging digital bank in SE Asia. One of Personetics’ first Asia Pacific-based partners. UOB identified and created 171 custom-built insights that would provide tangible added value to its customers. These led to a 400% increase in customer engagement and the net promoter score (NPS), a 50% click-through rate (CTR) on presented insights, and two-thirds of new customers are referrals from existing customers. 

Hyundai Card 

Hyundai Card, from South Korea, prides itself on its innovative approach to customers.  As part of its aggressive growth strategy, the credit card company partnered with Personetics to create an unparalleled customer experience that would bolster its relationships with existing customers and strongly appeal to new audiences. Customers are so impressed with the 100+ custom-built insights that there is a 19% CTR on insight call-to-action CTA’s a month and customers have awarded them a 4.8/5 rating.  

How SE Asian Banks are Using Transactional Data to Improve Customer Experience and Increase Engagement
 

• Standard Chartered Bank  

Standard Chartered Bank is committed to delivering great customer experience and is heavily investing in marketing technologies. The bank analyzes its transactional data, identifies patterns, extrapolates the customer’s best course of action, and is then able to offer personalized products such as lending capabilities, loans, credit or debit cards, investment opportunities and more.   

The bank is also using the data to better understand the events that impact its customers’ financial situations and thus, strengthen its customer relationships. This enables the bank to accurately assess customer needs, for example when to upsell and offer customers the option to move from a low-tier to a high-tier product or cross-sell from a lending product to an investment. 

• Techcombank 

Techcombank has partnered with Personetics to provide its customers with hyper-personalized insights and advice and deliver a superior customer experience. These insights are based on customers’ transactional data. Techcombank’s proactive approach is divided into four distinct buckets. 

1. Informing all customers of an event, for example, verifying whether two transactions for the same amount to the same party are intentional or a duplicate payment 
2. Asking customers if they want to take action, for example, whether to split a large credit card purchase into installments or prompting customers to move money into a savings account  
3. Advising customers to invest in specific types of savings plans 
4. Customers authorize Techcombank to independently act on their behalf, based on a pre-determined set of criteria. This approach requires enormous customer trust. 

In 2023, at the beginning of Techcombank’s collaboration with Personetics, the bank ran a three-week pilot program for 10,000 of its customers with impressive results. At the end of the period, savings balances increased by 9%, installment volume rose by 43.7%, the total installment value went up by 32%, and the customer average monthly log-in rates jumped by 444%!  

• Vietcombank  

Vietcombank is shifting from a segmented approach to a new model based on a more in-depth understanding of customer behavior, lifestyle, desires, and timing. By using financial data to identify specific triggers, the bank has started to act more ‘individually’ with customers and offer them personalized value, pushing its service to a new level of personalized engagement. 

“We’ve really got to understand what it is our customer wants, why they want it and, when they want it…Transactional data is going to be one of the biggest contributors of enabling that.” Colin Dinn, Vietcombank 

Personetics’ Hyper-Personalization Engagement Platform  

Personetics’ hyper-personalization engagement platform enables leading financial institutions globally to directly impact their customers’ financial health boost engagement and amplify business impact. The platform does this by providing actionable insights and automated financial programs that increase customer engagement, customer loyalty, and customer lifetime value. 

A bank’s ability to fully unlock customers’ transactional data as well as understand customers’ past and present financial behavior, predict future behavior, and act on it, greatly impacts the bank-customer relationship. The effective monetization of transactional data means that banks can help build customers’ financial wellness while bolstering their ongoing relationship and reinforcing their position as trusted partners and financial advisors.  

This new model is already becoming a global standard for banks. By creating an ongoing relationship that is transactional data-driven, yet timely and actionable the likelihood increases that when needed, banks will be able to better serve customers and monetize their value. 

Take the time to watch the webinar 

Hearing from these three banking giants about the ways they have leveraged transactional data to drive customer engagement and amplify business impact was inspiring. During the webinar, they shared their experience and provided insight into how they adopted a more customer-centric approach using transactional data. If you would like to hear more, please watch the webinar replay I strongly recommend it!