| Partner with SAS data mining technology to give best services for customers
Hang Seng Bank, Hong Kong's second-largest locally-incorporated bank has chosen to partner with SAS data mining technology to give best tailor-made services for their customers. Founded in 1933, Hang Seng Bank, a principal member of the HSBC group, operates 155 branches and automated banking centres in Hong Kong and four branches and two representative offices in mainland China, and serves more than one-third of Hong Kong's population.
The rapid reforms taking place in the world of finance has posed a significant challenge for the banking sector in Hong Kong. Facing intensified competition and full interest rate deregulation in the banking industry, many leading financial institutions have taken the necessary steps to stay ahead.
Hang Seng Bank understands that analytical CRM is the backbone of the decision support system to help manage individual customer relationship. Customer-centric information generated from in-depth analysis of customer data, such as product and service mix, channel usage pattern and customer's campaign responses are needed to generate inputs for strategy formulation.
Armed with these statistics, the bank will be able to deliver more personalized services to Hang Seng's account holders and what mix of products and services are required to satisfy their demands.
"SAS tools has been adopted for analytics in product performance, marketing campaign evaluation, business forecasting, credit scoring, risk management and many other business aspects since 1995," said William Leung, Hang Seng Bank's Deputy General Manager and Deputy Head of Retail Banking Division. "SAS is our all-in-one solution and its tools have helped produce the analysis we need for strategy planning."
Based on the previous success of SAS software, Hang Seng Bank has recently deployed SAS Enterprise Miner, a data mining tool, to improve the bank's day-to-day customer acquisition rate for the growth of their wealth management business. Hang Seng underwent a nine-month detailed evaluation to pick the most suitable software. SAS emerged as the only solution trusted and proven for data analysis in the banking sector.
"We already have a large customer base and SAS analytics is already helping us to maintain a high-level of customer satisfaction. Through cross-selling, we can also reach out to non-Hang Seng customers. SAS Enterprise Miner helps manage our business and gain competitiveness, and enables us to give the best tailor-made services to have our customers remain loyal to us and use more of our products, " added Leung.
The Retail Marketing Department at Hang Seng Bank is the key user of data mining tool. The department serves the retail banking and all the other business units within the bank. With the use of SAS Enterprise Miner, customer-centric business performance reports, sales performance reports and customer segment reports are generated on demand. Most banks conduct many marketing campaigns in a year. Response estimation and target marketing are playing an increasingly important role due to resources issue such as budget and time constraints.
5 Times Improvement in Campaign Management
Previously, Hang Seng performed mostly product analysis, and mass mailing was used in Hang Seng Bank's credit card marketing campaign. With SAS Enterprise Miner, they are now able to run a more targeted marketing campaign with pre-determined response rates for all of their marketing campaigns for benchmarking purposes. "Overall, we got over 5 times improvement in campaign response with the implementation of data mining. Given the encouraging results, instead of tactical one-time-off campaigns, a series of cross-selling initiatives based on individual customer's need and aspiration will be rolled out, and SAS Enterprise Miner will be in the hub supporting our marketing activities," Leung said.
The bank now has the option to conduct post campaign analysis on the efficiency of programs, and has a more scientific view of the result based on their historical data on different target groups and segments. With the prediction of result, forecast can be made on what they are going to achieve. In returns it helps prioritize Hang Seng's programs with a fair picture of allocating their resources.
Looking forward, Hang Seng Bank sees the Internet as the distribution channel in the new millennium. The Bank rolled out e-Banking in August 2000 and have gained more than 130,000 subscribers and over 40% of brokerage transactions have gone on-line. The bank believes current trend dictates the future development of e-Banking and m-commerce, and Hang Seng will work closely with SAS to capture these tremendous opportunities.
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