Christophe Langlois
Top Australian Banks launch Social Media spending comparison sites. CommBank and NAB’s UBank launched their sites that pool transactional data to allow customers to compare their spending patterns with other Australians.
CommBank’s Signals hub site collates on the debit and credit cards’ spending data of the customers comparing their everyday spending, personal loan payments, savings, and mortgage to others in their demographic. The bank also uses the data to analyse financial trends such as utility costs and state of the real estate market.
Every month, it publishes a new Signal that hones a particular issue. CommBank (@CommBank) processes over 40% of the nation’s transactions daily with its better ability to access and analyse financial data.
On the other hand, UBank’s PeopleLikeU put de-identified transaction records into an analytics engine, comparing the customers’ spending habits with others while maintaining their privacy. It combines the Australian Bureau of Statistics census data with UBank (@UBank) customers’ transaction records and uses these data to serve the average spending patterns of the people in that demographic.
The records are not survey-based, but real transactional data.
Users may also input more detailed data for a financial health check that compares their monthly shopping, housing, and communication costs with the average Australian. Alex Twigg, UBank Chief Executive officer referred to it as big data, a hot topic for its potential to customize customer-facing services and informed business decisions.
Organizations in the banking and finance sector of Australia are now applying big data analytics to individual customer data to inform pricing models and risks.
Key Stats:
- Over 40% of transactions in the country are processed by CommBank.
Andy Lark, Chief Marketing and Online Officer of CommBank: “CommBank has always had a deep passion about improving the financial knowledge of all Australians. The reality is, the more information you have, the more inclined you will be to make better informed financial decisions. Signals, a visual and interactive site providing customers with spending patterns across a broad range of topics delivers on that promise.”
PeopleLikeU:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HehbuKxLgbI&w=700]
Signals:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPh36uUFdzE&w=700]
Covered by my Visible Banking Team
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This is another type of application for big data in banking. In your opinion, should banks launch similar services like CBA and NAB to attract non customers, or should banks focus on leveraging customer data and give their clients the opportunity to compare themselves within the PFM section of online banking?
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