Reliance Capital grows market share and profitability with effective use of business analytics

After experiencing more than a decade of hyper-growth, India is one of the largest economies in the world, boasting a diverse industry portfolio and a population of 1.2 billion fueling its economic engine. Yet, as the economy adjusts to a more moderate pace, businesses must find more sophisticated ways to increase market share and customer profitability.

Customer Success Video

Check out this video to learn more about Reliance Capital and its successes with SAS.

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(Runtime: 4 mins, 52 secs)

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Customer Viewpoint
You have questions; our customers have answers. Check out this video Q&A.

Sandeep Phanasgaonkar 
President and CTO

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As part of its strategy, Reliance Capital, one of India’s largest diversified financial services group, uses business analytics to unearth and effectively tap market opportunities across the group businesses. As markets mature and consumers become more sophisticated in their choices, the company has successfully used SAS® Business Analytics to sustain growth and capitalize on the still-untapped market opportunities across all of its lines of business.  

"After a period of significant growth, we have redesigned our whole game to play in different markets and sustain our existing customer base," says Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President and CTO, Reliance Capital.

"When we were growing at 100, 200, 300 percent, we really didn't need analytics to improve business," he explains. "The recent economic meltdown really shocked us all and challenged our business. Sales came under pressure and costs had to be managed better. The business started looking for data to support decisions in terms of what products to introduce, what markets, how much money to spend and how best to manage risk. There was a real need for analytics."

Poised for growth 
To better position itself for growth, Reliance Capital implemented SAS Business Analytics for improved data quality and insights for the different lines of business.

"Because India has seen such rapid growth over the last few years, people can be very impatient; they expect results in a short timeframe," Phanasgaonkar says. "So we started doing proofs of concept on sample data to demonstrate the analysis that can be performed, such as why renewals are decreasing or why claims are increasing – and what can be done about it. Now they are able to understand trends and see how forecasting can help drive future business growth."

Customer benefits 
Not only will Reliance Capital benefit from its use of analytics, so will its more than 20 million customers.

"We want to provide differential pricing to reward our better-value customers," Phanasgaonkar says. "Business analytics help us to understand our customers much better and will allow them to benefit from the loyal relationship they have with us. No matter what product or service, we can be more sensitive to the customers' requirements to help strengthen the relationship between us."

Business priorities
With such diverse business interests, Phanasgaonkar is excited by the potential that analytics offer the entire organization – such as: retaining mutual fund customers by providing more product flexibility, predicting which customers  are most likely not to renew their life insurance policies, or generating more accurate pricing models for general insurance products. Phanasgaonkar has implemented a process of prioritizing BI initiatives in each business that will drive the most value in the shortest amount of time.

"SAS is an important BI tool to us," he concludes. "We are learning every day how to optimize our use of analytics. SAS' extensive experience in BI has provided us with the support to get the most value from the tool in the optimum period of time. We don't want to spend a lot of time in the learning and maturing process, because the stakeholders' faith in the tool may get diluted. They want to see a return on investment quickly. SAS is the BI tool that will provide us the capability to deliver on the results."

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