It was evident at the African Banking Forum organised by BMI-TechKnowledge in Midrand last week that banks` data are still being kept in information silos.
Of course, no one who has multiple bank accounts needs to be told that. In my case, after finally getting my bank to send my cheque account statement to the correct address, the card division was still attempting to contact me at the wrong address.
Customers are not the only ones getting the short end of the stick. Banks are losing out too. As one speaker at the conference noted, a vehicle finance customer is not seen as a home loan customer, or even a potential home loan customer. He remains, simply, a vehicle finance customer. The opportunity to cross-sell appropriately targeted products will continue to be lost until the bank can aggregate all the information about its customers on one screen.
And it would also reduce customer annoyance. Imagine my own irritation when, two months after my bank turned down an application for a home loan (thankfully a competing bank granted it), I received an invitation to apply for a home loan. A single view of the customer would eliminate such wasted effort.
One would have thought that with the recent hubbub over FICA compliance (remember standing in a queue in each of your banks to prove you are who you say you are, and that you live where you say you live?), the banks would have made use of the opportunity to aggregate all their client information into a single view. That was a missed opportunity if ever there was one.
The opportunity to cross-sell appropriately targeted products will continue to be lost until the bank can aggregate all the information about its customers on one screen.
Iain Scott, Finance editor, ITWeb
I fail to understand what the delay is. Full compliance with the plethora of new regulations around banking surely depends on having a single view of the customer. It is hard to imagine, for example, a bank having a proper risk profile of a customer (to meet Basel II requirements) without such a single view. Most banks claim that they are able to generate a single view, but this usually involves calling up information on multiple screens.
Perhaps the banking industry should talk to the South African Revenue Service (SARS), which a couple of years ago went live with a single view of its 9.5 million taxpayers. That was touted as saving SARS about R1 billion in its first year.
This fact makes it evident that a single view is not a pipe dream. At some stage, the banks are going to have to do it.
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