A leading member of China’s fintech sector says that banks need to make greater use of big data for marketing and client acquisition purposes.
“In the digital era, the transformation and upgrade of the banking sector faces especial difficulties in the two areas of marketing and risk control,” said Guo Wei (郭威), CTO of 51 Credit Card at the inaugural Money 20/20 China 2018 event.
Guo said that the banking sector has traditionally relied upon offline marketing to obtain customers, but that such methods were expensive given costs of labour, as well as characterised by low levels of efficiency based on physical restrictions.
“Following the onset of the consumer finance era, retail operations gradually became a focal area for the banking sector,” said Guo.
“The key to retail operations lies in the ability to obtain and retain customers. However, in the past coming into contact with customers via physical sites and other methods was not only expensive, it also provided only a weak sense of customer behaviour and habits. Conversion volumes were also low.”
While big data has the potential to greatly improve the efficiency and economy of customer acquisition by banks, Guo points out that its application in the realm of marketing by banks is still at the early stage of “the transition from the internet to AI.”
“in the consumer finance era, achieving the integration of offline data and real-time data based on changes that occur each second is the key challenge for resolving iterative risk control efficiency.
“While user volumes for banks are immense, because the start of online operations was comparatively late, understanding of user demand is quite weak, leading to inability to fully uncover user value.
“Maximising the value of individual clients will be the salient focal point for the banking sector when it comes to retail operations.
“In comparison, fintech companies uses the internet as a channel that can effectively break geographical restrictions, and increase the ability to contact and link to consumers.”
