Leveraging Intelligent Spatial Analytics to improve Customer Experience in Retail Banking

Speech by Olu Akanmu at the Executive Breakfast Meeting of ESRI/ Sambus Geospatial Limited.

The famous digital banking pundit, Brett King has said that banking is no longer where you go but what you do. With mobile and cloud technology, you take your bank with you anywhere you go. We do now know WHAT our customers do and WHEN they do them, on their mobile banking devices. Great products innovations have been developed based on what customers do on their mobile banking. Even more interesting innovations have been developed based on WHAT banking, customers do on their mobile platforms and WHEN they do them.

A key additional context is however missing in these banking innovations: WHERE CUSTOMERS DO WHAT THEY DO.  Current mobile banking platforms have weak capabilities to know where our customers are and even rarely in real time. Spatial Analytics and Geographic Information Systems allow us to triangulate WHAT customers do with WHEN they do it and WHERE they do it. The triangulation of WHEN, WHAT and WHERE customers do what they do, will give banking and other industries, even more powerful insights for innovation in products and customer experience. Insights of WHAT customers do, WHEN and WHERE they do what they do, will also enable REAL TIME product innovation and customer experience differentiation. Artificial intelligence that leverages dynamic locational (WHERE) data as customers move around, combined with what customers do and WHEN, will enable us to deliver even more powerful and compelling mobile banking propositions in real time.

Dynamic Spatial Analytics and Artificial Intelligence enable an additional “W” to the WHAT, WHERE and WHEN variables. Dynamic Spatial analytics enable mobile banking to identify “WHO” is WHERE customers are, WHEN they do WHAT they do. This offers additional contextual differentiation in real time for mobile banking. One of the critical functions of the banking in the new digital world is to be a “dynamic access facilitator” to diverse services (what customers do) in the ecosystem from transportation, to health, agriculture, shopping, travels, education, trade, investments, payments and borrowing. Leveraging the ecosystem resources and artificial intelligence, if we know WHO and WHAT is WHERE our customers are and WHEN, we can tout and cross-sell more REAL TIME innovations and services to them with diverse ecosystem partners, generate more revenue while improving customer experience.

The power of location and location characteristics, from dynamic and intelligent spatial analytics, triangulated with events/ occasions and time also have potentially huge impact on sectors like agriculture and financial inclusion. It can be applied in diverse areas like irrigation, microinsurance, cropping, finance of small holder farmers and micropayments to revolutionise agriculture. Intelligent and dynamic spatial analytics will also have strong applications in addressing energy poverty and poor access with the potentials to complement applications in agriculture to lift millions out poverty.

September 3, 2019 #artificialintelligence #retailbanking #spatialanalytics #digitalbanking