The acceleration of the digital economy makes data siloes, complexity and ambiguity the worst enemies of enterprises in the financial services sector.  When you add the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic to the equation, you end up with major disruptions to tracking and improving the customer experience.

Although the full outcome of the Covid19 pandemic is unknown, banks and other players in the financial services industry need to improve their understanding of customer circumstances through difficult and prosperous times in order to win long term loyalty and profitability.

Loyalty is limited - 5.6 million individuals switched banks, 6.3 million intend to switch within the next year, 31 million are on the fence about staying or leaving their bank. 50% fewer consumers view their bank as a “trusted partner” than 2 years ago. 76% of consumers would re-evaluate abandoning a relationship if a new company would excel at personalization compared to their current one.

Financial Services customers expect personalized, convenient service consistently across online and offline channels. They also expect to be rewarded for any good financial behavior. Banks are urgently prioritizing the development of digital channels to interact with customers as the pandemic continues. Although these channels are convenient, banks still need to put customer experience at the center and prioritize personalization, so they don’t deliver irrelevant, conflicting offers or treatment.

Says Michelle Beetar, MD of FICO Africa, “There has never been a more important time than now to put the customer at the center of all that you do while balancing organizational needs. The level of sophistication of today’s customer calls for sophisticated customer analytics to automate decisions in order to improve customer interactions.”

Beetar emphasizes leveraging real time and traditional data to create a 360⁰ view of the customer and precisely profile customers based on customer risk, financial resilience, circumstances, preferences, and other behaviours.

“Banks need to also improve decisions through greater collaboration across the organisation, empower business users to drive change, and provide the flexibility and agility required to accelerate learnings and rapidly respond to market, macro-economic and regulatory change”.

New players in the financial services sector continue to push the envelope in order to optimize the customer experience. The ability to treat each customer as an individual will distinguish between companies that will form part of the debris of the Covid tsunami, and companies that are built to last and thrive in spite of the pandemic.