The investment banking industry lags behind the consumer retail industry in its ability to derive quantifiable benefits from data. Retailers differentiate their product offerings in every store, they have just-in-time supply chain management and they adjust pricing for each customer through a complex system of discounts. This kind of tailored offering is made possible by powerful analysis of customer data.
So why do investment banks manage their commerce differently?
The answer is in the underlying data strategy – retail data was collected over many years, and each product is identifiable through a bar code that can link together multiple purchase decisions by one person.
Like commercial retailers, banks have significant amounts of data; in the case of banks, datasets are collected through regulatory reporting and for the purposes of audit trails. However, the utility of this mandatory data for sophisticated analytics is low. In this report, Client-centric Services in the Data-driven Bank, we prescribe that all data related to client interactions should be captured throughout the bank’s sales lifecycle, across channels and across business lines.
The importance of client-centric approach
The discussion of data management strategy in this report is structured along the lines of the bank’s client facing capabilities. These capabilities became more important over the last two years as the technological proficiency of buyside firms grew. There are many approaches to defining an attractive offering for clients, but all banks that aim to successfully leverage their client data start with three principle questions:
1. Who are the highest-priority clients?
2. What is important for these high-priority clients?
3. How can the needs of these clients be addressed?
