PRESS RELEASE

DISTRIBUTION & MARKETING INNOVATION AWARDS 2014
sponsored by Efma and Accenture

THE INTESA SANPAOLO GROUP ACHIEVES 1ST PRIZE IN THE “CUSTOMER ANALYTICS AND BIG DATA” CATEGORY FOR ITS “MULTI-BANKING” CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT MODEL

INTESA SANPAOLO WAS ALSO RECOGNISED IN THE SPECIAL “GLOBAL INNOVATOR” CATEGORY FOR ITS OVERALL INNOVATION STRATEGY

• The Intesa Sanpaolo Group was the only Italian bank to win an award at the world-wide competition for innovative projects and best practice in the financial services sector
• Intesa Sanpaolo has designed a predictive analytics-based approach to identifying customers most likely to bank with more than one institution, pinpointing the main causes and providing managers with advice and tools to help them consolidate their commercial relationships
• The strategy implemented by Intesa Sanpaolo – which has made innovation a key driver behind the growth and ongoing development of its business model – was also recognised with the special “Global Innovator” award

Turin, 16th October 2014. The Intesa Sanpaolo Group has received an award from Efma and Accenture for true innovation in its approach to managing customers who bank with more than one institution. It has widened traditional analysis (based, for example, on money transfers to accounts bearing the same name but held with other banks) to include a predictive analytics-based approach enabling it to search the Bank’s huge data reserves (“Big Data”) and source useful information on a customer’s potential value in order to offer more closely-targeted services.

Intesa Sanpaolo received its prize in the “Customer analytics and Big Data” category at the official ceremony for the Distribution & Marketing Innovation Awards 2014 in Barcelona yesterday.

Launched in February of this year, the three-month-long project was inspired by the need to monitor different customer segments more closely. It was also designed to reflect the outcome of a recent customer satisfaction survey in which a fifth of customers interviewed said they held accounts with more than one bank.

The aim of the project was therefore to provide an even more accurate overview of the phenomenon, sourcing detailed information on customers who bank with more than one institution, be they “definite” cases identified by transaction analysis or “probable” cases identified using the model. For this purpose the Bank created an analytical model based on a wide range of specific indicators for each segment; the indicators were constantly fine-tuned to ensure that analysis was as accurate as possible.

Data analysis revealed a target customer base which is “definitely or very likely” to hold multiple bank accounts – some 40% of the Bank’s customers, around half of whom (as the customer satisfaction survey showed) consider Intesa Sanpaolo their “secondary bank”.

The project also provided a means of re-establishing (or improving) relationships with these customers using an innovative approach which better reflected their potential value, linked to their status as “multiple-account holders”.

A key factor in the subsequent plan of action involved bringing in account managers: incentives included as part of the project enabled them to work on the quality of their relationships with customers, drawing on more accurate information regarding their habits, profiles and financial needs, multi-channel contact initiatives and ad-hoc packages. By improving the customer experience and adapting our products to suit the target, we were able to improve customer loyalty to the Bank among customers involved in the project and significantly limit the natural rate of loss.

Intesa Sanpaolo achieved first prize in the same category at the inaugural edition of the Awards last year for its rethink of commercial relationships between customers and account managers in 2012, a project which shifted the main focus from sales success to the quality of relations. This year the Group also took third place in the special “Global Innovator” category, open only to financial institutions which excel world-wide for their global innovation strategies.

Stefano Barrese, head of Intesa Sanpaolo’s Marketing Division and Planning and Management Control Division, who collected the awards on behalf of the Bank yesterday and took part in various sessions throughout the day, explains, “It’s significant that Intesa Sanpaolo has stood out among many different institutions from all over the world for the second year running, the only Italian bank to do so. Our drive to innovate and realise our ideas is increasingly central to the way we operate; it’s essential if we are to carry on along the path we’ve taken and transform our service and organisational model so that it’s built around our customers and our people.”

The www.efma.com/accenture website has a description of Intesa Sanpaolo’s project, along with innovations by 337 financial institutions from 77 different countries.

 
For further information:

Intesa Sanpaolo                                                        
Media Relations
Banca dei Territori and Local Media
Tel +39 0115559609
stampa@intesasanpaolo.com