Experian, the global information solutions company, today launched Current Account Switcher.
With twice as many people switching current accounts in 2005 than in 2004, Experian's latest direct marketing solution enables banks and building societies not only to identify new prospects, but also take steps to prevent existing customers from switching to a new provider.
Gillian Buttree, Marketing Director of Experian's Marketing Services division, said: "Current accounts are traditionally recognised as a "gateway" product. Although not necessarily profitable in isolation, a current account is often a successful way to begin a new customer relationship. Once that relationship has been established, further more lucrative products are often sold. As a result, keeping existing current account customers and cross-selling to them, as well as attracting those switching from other providers, is an important marketing objective."
To help fulfil this objective, Current Account Switcher from Experian combines the company’s range of financial and non-financial data and analytical solutions to identify and accurately predict prospect and customer behaviours.
To boost customer acquisition, Current Account Switcher enables providers to:
- Identify "high service level" individuals – by using Experian's wealth of financial and lifestyle data to indicate which prospects are the most likely to have high service level expectations and potentially become dissatisfied with their existing current account and look to switch to another provider
- Target "household" prospects – using National Canvasse, Experian's alternative to the edited electoral roll, to identify individuals in an existing customer's household and target the account holder with "recommend a friend" type incentives or joint account promotions
- Target other account holders – using Truvue, Experian's name and address matching technology, to identify customers that hold other savings and loan products from the bank/building society, who may be receptive to its current account promotions
To enable providers to manage existing customer relationships more effectively, Current Account Switcher from Experian helps organisations to:
- Detect cross and up sell opportunities – using MarketSwitch, Experian's marketing optimisation software, and propensity models to build an optimised customer contact strategy using the events identified from transactions on a customer's current account to identify the best offer, prompt or mailing insert for the customer using inbound and outbound channels
- Identify "switchers" – by using Experian's attrition models to indicate which customers are most likely to change their current account, therefore enabling the provider to adopt the appropriate retention programme
Gillian Buttree added: "Today's consumers can easily turn to comparison web sites or newspaper "best buy" tables to see if they can get a more competitive account elsewhere. We are confident that Current Account Switcher from Experian is a major step forward for banks and building societies that want to find smarter ways of using direct marketing to win more customers and reduce churn rates."