Customer Intelligence Supports Revenue Growth for UBS

Building long-term client relationships

To deliver effective wealth management services in a client-driven marketplace, profound knowledge of financial markets alone isn’t enough. You need to understand what makes customers tick, so you can deliver products and services that meet their precise needs and help them achieve their financial objectives.

UBS is the world’s biggest wealth manager, a top-tier investment banking and securities firm and a leading asset manager. In Switzerland, the company is the market leader in retail and commercial banking. UBS believes in taking a systematic, fact-based approach – which extends to how it interacts with existing and prospective clients.

Business challenges faced include a fast-moving market environment that demands the ability to anticipate and respond to change. Increased competitive choices imply less client loyalty, while margins are being squeezed, leaving less room for error. “This is no longer the ‘big seller’s market’ – client desires are driving the market,” says Dr. Daniel Rüegge, Head of Client Analytical Services, Market Strategy and Development at UBS.

UBS is profiting from an integrated service approach that extends from strategic opportunity analysis through execution to monitoring of outcomes. Customer intelligence, provided by SAS analytics, gives insights into UBS clients and their behaviour, revealing new opportunities for sales, marketing and product development. Analytical CRM units drive activity in key areas such as client book development and delivering flexible sales force support.

Indeed, SAS supports the activities of several thousand client advisers across Europe, while the sister unit in the United States, Client Analytical Services, also uses SAS. “Independently, we came to the same conclusion: SAS was the right solution,” adds Rüegge. “Now, it’s very easy to exchange knowledge.” The use of SAS has become part of the following process:

• Knowledge is gained from diverse data sources that include client information, accounts, securities, mortgages, lending, credit cards, transactions and profitability.
• Data is consolidated in a centralized IBM DB2 operational data source, where SAS transforms the data.
• SAS analytics enable customer segmentation and behaviour modelling to provide customer intelligence – usable knowledge to deliver against UBS’ strategy.
• These insights drive targeted activity in business areas that include sales, client adviser support, applications, marketing and direct marketing campaigns.

Dr. Rüegge says that, with SAS’ help, UBS has an opportunity to “continually leverage client, market and competitive insights to build compelling, differentiated and sustainable business strategies to drive future revenues and profits. We have information on what different client groups are doing, across local geographical areas and in terms of our products and solutions. Our local managers have lots of freedom, and we can support them. This is all about revealing best practice and sharing the knowledge gained.” UBS can see what’s working in certain areas and replicate this success elsewhere. 

He says, "SAS is the only approach that ticks all the boxes. You can achieve 'quick wins' and gain proof of concept very fast. You can then very quickly scale up. The sheer speed and power of SAS, combined with its other functionality, is something you don't get anywhere else. It's also easy to use: Our analysts can get on with their work rather than fighting with the technology. We can test business hypotheses by mailing to target samples and ensuring we have the right offers. We are able to focus on client needs rather than spending all our time on issues like data preparation."

With SAS, UBS has seen data preparation time decrease by up to 60 percent, while take-up rates for targeted mailing samples have increased by 30 percent to 40 percent for selected segments.

“The last step is measuring performance: We can quantify the impact of SAS on sales performance, focusing on products and campaigns that give the best returns. Analysis can also reveal things not to do, like changing pricing structures in a certain area. This sort of knowledge underpins our entrepreneurship. Having all these things in combination is the main advantage of SAS.”

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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