Financial institutions for long, have been relying on geocoding and location intelligence, for improved decision-making regarding the potential of a market as well as site selection. With the advancement of technology, however, using a combination of smartphone adoption, mobile banking, reverse geocoding, etc. enables them to have a real-world, real-time impact on consumer experiences. This has resulted in location intelligent applications now being more consumer-centric.
Today, as more and more brands are getting closer to their customers with the help of increasingly relevant social interactions, as well as on-the-go touchpoints, financial institutions that will master location intelligence, are going to gain that significant edge over the competition. Hence, let’s take a look at location intelligence applications that every financial firm should think of deploying.
● Increasing Geo-relevance: Earlier, banks would target consumers based on the neighbourhood clusters and the segmentation of demographic. Now they can accurately point and find opportunities, based upon shopping behaviour in the real world. For example, consumers today end up checking in using the GPS functionality that is available on smartphones, which gives a very clear picture of what their needs and wants are at the moment. By getting access to this timely information via social media apps, financial institutions can now present relevant offers, so in a way, banks can always be aware of exactly what their customers need.
● Real-time Rewarding of Loyalty: Garnering information about where your customers are or where they end up spending that time, eating, shopping or travelling, can give financial institutions insight into their lifestyle and interests. Having access to this level of information helps in the designing and promotion of loyalty and affinity programmes that are much more intuitive and accurate. Today social media marketers and retailers have already started utilising reverse geocoding for the delivery of real-time, relevant messaging to the customers.
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For example, as soon as a consumer walks into the mall, a welcome text message can be sent or even savings can be offered to consumers for the usage of credit or debit cards at the specific partner store around the corner.
● Authentication of e-Cards and Wallets: There has been an acceleration in the rate of credit card theft over the years which has resulted in banks utilising complex models and algorithms into their transaction approval platforms. As a result of this, many a time consumers might end up seeing transactions that are valid being declined, especially while they may be travelling or might be exhibiting what the algorithm might see as a change in purchasing behaviour.
Soon, your bank will be able to ascertain whether their client is in possession of the card, by comparing the physical whereabouts captured with the help of smartphone GIS, to the current transaction location. This will lead to cardholders not being inconvenienced by card declines.
● Fraud Reduction: As mentioned in the point above, with the help of location intelligence, Banks will be able to determine whether the cardholders are in possession of their cards or not and also be alerted quite quickly if they are separated from them. Location intelligence will be able to pinpoint transaction locations quite quickly and accurately, this will help the banks in assessing the time and distance between transactions and figure out patterns in real-time. Why this becomes relevant is because it will help them in shutting down any fraudulent activities fast, thus limiting exposure for both itself and its customers
● Deliverance of Local Convenience: When you talk about day to day banking services, the most important factor that matters still is convenience. For most financial institutions, location convenience and retail deployment become important in the form of a single mailing address. Being able to get information regarding where your consumers are doing the day, or whatever distance is travelled between home and office, can help banks in planning their expansion of the network, any future acquisitions or even current investments.
When a bank reaches out to its client base and lets them know of the closest location of a branch or ATM service, they are able to cater to the convenience of their consumers, which is something that is paid importance to a lot.
Today, almost every event that is related to consumers, has an element of location embedded in it. You will find that geospatial data and analysis are being incorporated across the financial sector in order to help with daily decision making and workflow. The next era of consumer-centric applications can provide banks with much more effective ways to engage the customers, increase loyalty as well as grow revenues. Hence, the fact remains, organisations that will utilise master location intelligence, will end up getting an unparalleled advantage over their competition.
Views expressed in this article are the personal opinion of Ashwanii Rawat, Co-Founder & Director, Transerve.
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