Personalisation in Banking

Personalisation fuels engagement and loyalty. According to Salesforce, 84% of individuals want to be treated as a person, not a number.

Personalisation in banking fuels engagement and loyalty

Despite the necessity of driving individualised experiences, the banking industry is struggling to keep up with retailers, media and tech companies in delivering these highly tailored interactions and product offerings to their customers. And considering that millennials and Gen Z will comprise a significant faction of future bankers, it is pivotal that banks appeal to them with emotion, branding and lasting connections.

The issues with using segmentation for personalization

While some banks may provide personal customer experiences, the vast majority cannot meet the high expectations of their customers. The problem is that many banks position their customer journey and marketing efforts around common life moments or experiences.

For example, when a client transitions from high school to college, the bank will bombard that person with student-centered messaging. Later, when the consumer turns 21, the bank will send them marketing material related to purchasing their first house or a new car.

This approach isn’t personalisation – it’s just lifecycle and lifestyle marketing. Just because the consumer turned 25, it doesn’t mean they automatically want to have a mortgage or get married. By making broad assumptions about someone based on their age, consumers – especially millennials – will start to feel distant from their bank. The reality is that banks are not doing the hard work of truly understanding their customers’ needs, and, as a result, their customer journeys feel too generic. Rather than marketing based on life moment segmentation, banks should instead work to target customers through contextualisation.

Read the full article here.

Read EPAM’s third annual Consumer Banking Report here.