thoughtline august2010 - the banking & financial services e-newsletter from wipro technologies

AUGUST 2010AUGUST 2010

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ethe Banking & Financial Services -newsletter from Wipro Technologies

Volume VIII Edition XXXIII

the Banking & Financial Services -newsletter from Wipro Technologies e

Feedback & Suggestions aremost welcome. Please email to

[email protected]

Editorial Team

Jayaprakash KavalaSenthil Kumar Mohan

Vijay Swaminathan

Volume VIII Edition XXXIII

Index

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2the Banking & Financial Services -newsletter from Wipro Technologiese

For Wipro internal circulation only

.......................................................................................................................3• Foreword

• Market/Trends Watch

• Demystification

• Innovation/ BTG Corner

Fun Corner•

• GREEK Masks..............................................................................................................20

- Banks and their reaction to social phenomena...........................................................4

- Social Media Marketing and Social CRM in Banking and Financial Services...............9

- Enhancing Customer Experience - Banking on Social Analytics.................................11

- Social Media - Best Practices for Financial Organizations..........................................14

- Social Media for Debt Collections..............................................................................16

- Social Reputation Management................................................................................18

- Social Corner..............................................................................................................19

Foreword 3the Banking & Financial Services -newsletter from Wipro Technologiese

As of early June 2010, there were 190 million users of Twitter with an increase of over 400 times in the last 28 months. As of early June 2010, Facebook has got 519 million users with an increase of over 26 times during the same period. As of May 2010, LinkedIn had 65 million users, up from just one million in September 2004. There has been a huge surge in the number of consumers active on blogs, forums and video streaming websites. With this kind of astronomical growth in the consumer adoption of social media, it is inevitable for the businesses to ride with it rather than fight it. There have been lots of ideas and some experiments on how banking and financial services institutions can adopt social media for business. We think the time is ripe for financial institutions to seriously look at social media as catalyst for business growth and in sync with this thought we have chosen 'Social Media for Banking' as the theme for this August'2010 edition of Thoughtline.

In this edition we bring you an eclectic mix of articles on how social media can be used for different aspects of banking business i.e. marketing, customer acquisition, customer servicing and loan collections.

In our market/trends watch section, we bring you an article on the trends in social media adoption with the cases of the social media adoption in banking industry.

In the demystification section, we bring you an article on the social media marketing and social CRM for banks. This article discusses the approach and the challenges for banks to utilize social media for marketing. Next, we bring you an article on taking a fresh approach towards enhancing customer experience using social analytics. This article discusses ideas for enhancing the online banking customer experience using the best of the web and social analytics like sentiment analysis, text mining etc. Then, we bring you an article on the best practices in social adoption that financial services industry can learn from other industries. Finally we bring you an article on how banks use social media for tracking defaulters and collecting on loans.

In the Innovation/BTG corner you get a sneak peak of Wipro's social reputation management solution.

As usual we have fun corner in the form of 'Social Corner'.We sincerely thank all the contributors and wish you all a happy 'Social reading'.

Best Wishes from the Thoughtline Editorial Team Jayaprakash Kavala

Senthil Kumar MohanVijay Swaminathan

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The views and opinions expressed in the articles/other contributions by individuals are strictly those of the authors and should not be viewed as professional advice with respect to your business.

Parts of the Images used in this Thought Line is from Reproductions of Greek Masks


Banks and their reaction to the Social PhenomenaSushankar Daspal Practice Head, Banking Domain

This article will provide a view of how banks are reacting to the social phenomena. The reactions of banks span all segments of the spectrum starting from adoption, participation, to outright rejection of the social space as a bad dream! This article will also cover a few recommendations of how banks should participate in this new medium.

However, let us face facts. The users of social media are our current customers. 42% of US customers are on FaceBook. 57% of FaceBook users are in the demographic 26 to 52 years. This is our prime customer segment. Let us also not forget the Gen Y'ers. This generation (~30% of the FaceBook population) is where our future customers and employees are going to come from.

It is upto us to decide whether we want to be part of the conversation as participants. If not, the community is free to continue discussing about us and drawing its own conclusions.

The adjacent diagram identifies the key ones that are important for banks today. There is a lot of material that discusses these various social media avenues and this article will not cover this well-worn path.

The author recommends that banks approach the social media space using the following model of “baby steps”:

1) Monitor 2) Prepare3) Engage!

1.1. The avenues of social interaction

1.2. How should banks start?The Baby Steps Approach

Monitor

Prepare - Building Social into the DNA

Engage! - Crossing the Rubicon…

The stage “Monitor” is the de-facto stage of many banks today. In this stage, the banks understand what is happening in the area of social media and how their brand and services are being perceived by the external world. The most important part of this stage is the steps that the bank needs to take to get ready to “Prepare”.

To start with – banks have to identify a sponsor and some passionate executive(s) within their organization who has the charter of understanding this space. The sponsor must be well experienced, well connected, as well as influential enough to charter a roadmap for the bank. It is expected that the sponsor and executives be participants in the social conversation. The learnings from first-hand interaction far outstrip conference attendance, analyst reports and marketing segmentation charts.

For the next stage of “Prepare” – banks can use a relatively low impact route to explore the social media space. Start-off with internal communication. Create internal blogs. Create a news feed of key company announcements for staff on the intranet.

Create internal discussion forums. These forums can be on a number of issues. Some recommendations:

1) Knowledge sharing networks / wikis 2) Branch / geography based networks 3) New product announcements 4) Employee HR discussion forums 5) Virtual Town Halls with senior management

Only when the bank has a culture of internal usage – will social technologies be ingrained into the DNA of the institution. This culture will forge or throw up your natural social communicators – who are ready to communicate with the external world. Without these social communicators – the conversation can be too stilted or “bank like” – hindering adoption. These social communicators will be the core of your team of first responders.

The bank can now take this farther. Create a news feed for press and investors.

Market/ Trends Watch

Blogs and YouTube

posts RSS Feeds

Twitter interactions

Communities

Monitor Prepare Engage!


Create corporate blogs for external consumption. Create themes that are in-line with your brand value and promise. Open up comments in a moderated environment. Feed these comments back into the social strategy.

Once confidence is gained - this is the time for the bank to start interacting on topics of immediate importance – that have been handled only by traditional media. In addition – the bank now performs Positive Social Interventions. Now, the bank actively addresses statements made in the community that impact it. This includes correcting mis-statements and responding to items that indicate service issues.

The bank now crosses the Rubicon of Communication into Engagement. This is not to be done lightly. Once the bank starts engaging into topical items –

expectations are set. The community now expects to be able to engage on an ongoing basis. There is

no possibility for an on-off community attitude. Once engaged – retribution for disengagement is very swift and severe. The brand can take a very severe plummeting on various social forums if the bank is seen to be non-responsive. Even worse, social media now leads traditional media. Missteps can be soon become a PR disaster covered in the mainstream press.

It is important that formal communication protocols be defined for this community engagement. Internal workflows need to be created - to ensure that the first respondent team is empowered with information and authority to take action.

This is the stage where it is recommended that banks use automated technologies to monitor social conversations. These technologies are called Social Reputation Management. Many such technologies are available off-the-shelf. These technologies perform, in an automated manner, the job of scanning social interactions to determine those interactions that impact the bank. Once identified, the first respondent team takes over.

So, what are the avenues for engagement with customers? 1) Level I: Use FaceBook (and

other media) for brand building and announcements

2) Level II: Using social media for customer service

3) Level III: Create a synergistic theme-centric community

Levels of Engagements

While, we can write and read pages on each of these levels of engagement, it is best to see what some banks are doing in each of these levels.

Level I Case Studies – Brand Building and Announcements


Level I: Announcements and Brand Building

Level II: Customer Service

Level III: Synergistic Community Building

On the Standard Bank FaceBook page – note the interaction between the bank and its customers

Like any other community – USAA has its share of detractors. Note how other members of its community come up in support of USAA.

Barclays Wealth Management has taken an information dissemination approach to Twitter. There are no interactions on this page.



Citibank and Bank of America are examples of FaceBook pages that can be better.

Level II Case Studies: Using Social Media for customer service

The last post was on March 3rd. It has been months since any update has been published.

Bank of America does not have any posts on this page. The community has filled in the void – with rants – on a consistent basis.

All the 4 most recent tweets from Bank of America are reactions to issues raised by customers. This is an excellent example of risk management. Better have your customers complain in a forum where you atleast take some action.

ING Direct's twitter page is a conversation between friends. Suggestions are given and taken.

Level III Case Study – Building a community

Who is managing HBOS Twitter page…??

SunTrust's site focusing on women is an excellent example of how banks can start the seeds of community. Note the emphasis on “content” and community building with “Tips” “Polls”, and articles. Also, note the muted bank branding. The bank has chosen to emphasize the community over its own agenda.

One look at the PNC Virtual Wallet site and a few things pop straight up. This is a site for Gen Y'ers. Focus is Money Management. The theme is interaction, simplicity, and straight talk. There is extensive usage of Web 2.0 gadgets like the carousel in the top. This site is an excellent nucleus for a community focused on these topics.

Banco Sabadell has a forum for discussing product ideas with the bank. The bank and the community have truly become synergistic partners in the journey.



1.3. Risks Some of the risks that banks face in this journey are described below:

1) Sustain the journey for the long haul – with an exit plan: A bank's engagement on the social media space should be for the long term. On building a community – a bank's role evolves from a community owner to the community custodian. The community exists due to the joint effort of the bank and the members of the community. They become equal stakeholders in the success of the community. It is possible that the social media presence might not meet the goals and benchmarks set by the management team. Perhaps, the effort put in by the bank is comparatively higher than expected. Alternatively, a critical mass is not being reached. The bank wants to pull the plug on the effort. Does it just terminate the community? Doing so – without a

well-defined exit plan can be damaging to the brand. Here the bank needs to respect the effort put in by the members into building the community into the current state. The community can have a remarkable long memory and a haphazard retreat can damage future community efforts by the bank. Exit plans must have community buy-in – to ensure an investment into future efforts of the bank.

2) Need for a communication protocol: The viral nature of social network can amplify actions of the bank. With social networks, it is important to refer to the old adage – “news travels fast; bad news – faster!” An insensitive / politically incorrect response or an attempt to “pass the buck” or do a cover-up can boomerang into a bullwhip effect (a small movement on the handle results in a large movement at the tip). It is important that the bank have a written and well-defined communication protocol that is followed by all its social communicators. When mistakes are made (and they will be), own up to the mistakes, and take remedial action. Once convinced on the bank's sincerity, the community will allow the bank to move on.

3) Inconsistent messages: This is a critical aspect of the communication protocol. Messages passed in the social media have to be consistent with other messages in other media. APRs have to match. Product details and Terms & Conditions have to be identical…

4) Regulations and Legal and Compliance teams: The bank needs to be aware that just because the communication channel involves social networks – the bank is not freed from its legal obligations and regulatory requirements. The same regulations governing communication via traditional channels also apply to the social networks. Disclosures have to be provided. Anti-discrimination laws still apply… It is critical that the legal and compliance teams are made an integral part of the social media initiative. Legal and compliance adherence has to be made a part of the social communication workflow.

5) Attacks by motivated parties: This is another aspect of the communicator protocol. How does the bank defend itself from attacks by motivated parties or squatters? When do correction of incorrect information infringe on the rights of others to state their opinions? How do you ensure that your community members are not spammed by merchants from the internet back alley? When will a corrective rejoinder do and when will there be a cease-and-desist letter? Be aware, the cease-and-desist letter may only reinforce the image of the “big brother bank”.

6) Risk of exposure to illegal information: This is an emerging area – and one

Risks

Long-term Commitment

Comm. Protocols

Inconsistency

Regulations Motivated Parties

Illegal Information

Slow Processes



that the bank has to be especially careful. Take the following scenario: The HR manager is recruiting via the social media, checks the Facebook page, and find out that the candidate is a senior citizen. The candidate is not considered for the position. Has age related anti-discrimination laws being violated? A small business is considered for a loan. The loan officer (who has strong religious and social beliefs) does a check on the social media for background information on the owner. Information turns up that is in conflict with the loan officer's personal beliefs. The loan is not considered. Is this a discrimination case? In all of these cases, the bank – through its employees – was exposed to information that was potentially illegal for it to obtain. The onus of proof now shifts onto the bank to prove that the illegal information was not a factor in the decision making process. The jury may be out on this case.

7) Internal processes slowing down reaction times: In an effort to build the above mitigating actions into the internal workflow – the bank can create a bureaucracy slow to react to developments running on “internet time”. A bank needs to create flexible rapid response cross-functional teams that are seasoned and empowered to react to community crises and defuse them early in the surge.

While each of these risks are significant – there are also concrete mitigating action that the bank can take. Perhaps, the worst decision is to do nothing. Every other action is an improvement.


Demystification

Social media marketing and Social CRM in Banking and Financial ServicesRahul Koul Senior Manager, Strategic marketing

INTRODUCTION

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES

General Social Networking:

Financial Social Networks:

The rapid rise of Web 2.0 has presented organizations with tools to gain stronger foothold in the market. Social media marketing has given businesses the power to experiment and drive the markets and thereby gain a competitive edge. Besides engaging multiple stakeholders of a business, social media is evolving as a rewarding means of customer relationship management.

Although the concept seems straightforward, different industries will have to develop tailor-made techniques to integrate social media into their traditional marketing and customer relationship management functions. Such integration is still evolving and companies are gradually relaxing their caution and stepping into unchartered waters.

The advent of social media implies that businesses can now explore marketing channels beyond one-way communication with their stakeholders. It has made them involve their customers, employees, experts and other members of the ecosystem in a participative conversation. Below are a few examples to show how various social media channels are being utilized in the financial sector in order to become conversational with various fronts of the market.

Saxo Bank entered Facebook in February 2010. It has managed to garner over 7000 followers in a short span of time. Through this platform, it has tried to intellectually brand itself by giving regular updates on the market, products, etc., It has made efforts to educate its target market though interactive and educative games on Forex Trading. By more transparently educating the target segment, Saxo Bank has created a potential to generate business through social media.

Prosper.com is one such initiative where lenders and borrowers network and as a result of this networking, the firm pockets profits in the form of fees charged for every transaction.

Communities/Networks:

Blogging:

Widgets:

SOCIAL CRM

Open Forum, a social community started by American express, is a hybrid between a networking forum and a conservative web portal. It filters businesses based on predefined criteria and helps members reach businesses they are on the lookout for. It is also a repository of expert advice on finance, technology, marketing, etc., for small businesses. It is connected to Twitter and a discussion forum, from where opinions are crowd-sourced.

Wells Fargo Bank, first bank in USA to start a corporate blog - blogs pertaining student loans, debt management, financial education, etc. It has provision for customer grievance redressal and also facilitates brainstorming discussions between employees of the bank and its target segment.

Barclays has a financial planning widget that offers stock tips and financial news. Fidelity has a widget that provides a view into one's account at Fidelity. Such small frills administered through social media can become sensitive differentiators in the long run.

Traditional CRM strategy followed by Banking and Financial Services sector is driven by operations and processes. This setup is overturned in case of social media marketing and Social CRM. The weight is on content generated from stakeholder engagement and the focus is on people, rather than processes. For instance, in a conventional strategy, customers are surveyed to assess their satisfaction, while Social CRM implies conversing with the customer or witnessing customer discussion through new media to extract similar information.

Presently, banks and financial institutions are using social media as a conversational weapon. Whether it is blogs, social networking groups, podcasts or widgets, the usage of social media has only been a brand building exercise. Banks and financial institutions are primarily relying on the activity that takes place on these platforms to generate leads spontaneously. The institutions are not indulging in business intelligence per se.

In a data-driven traditional CRM structure, automated platforms are used to consolidate useful data. For example, banking firms can easily track high value and


Demystification

low value customers. Accordingly, they can direct new products. The value profile of customers helps them identify potential targets for their offerings. Banking and financial services firms must figure out decision variables in case of social media and adopt platforms which can help them extract this information from the activity on Facebook, Blog, etc., Is a bank going to use customer information on Facebook to communicate marketing information? Can a bank segregate the real customers and the passer-bys? Can a financial services firm offering transaction services within the social networking portals such as Facebook or Twitter? Can a financial services firm provide real time customer support through these forums without compromising on security and quality? These are some of the questions to be answered.

In a traditional CRM framework, data sourced through campaigns is consolidated and analyzed using automated platforms to make forecasts and decisions. However, in SCRM, organizations are barely in control of the ways and types of content generated. A 1:1 interaction between employees and customers can be maintained in a traditional CRM but such a ratio is unrealistic in SCRM. The idea of a bank responding to complaints through Twitter may sound fitting, but issues of authenticity, information privacy, workflow, and scale and information logistics have to be taken care of. Presently, banking and financial services sector is only partly administering SCRM, i.e. conversing with customers. If it intends to use SCRM to its fullest potential, then it has to develop ways to integrate these inputs from customers with automated platforms and business intelligence systems. With technology gearing up with accommodating applications and regulatory bodies clarifying their stance on SCRM, faster adoption of SCRM among banks and financial services firms is expected.

The external and the internal factors dictating a business largely influence the dynamics of social media marketing. Banking and Financial Services sector is an arena where these factors can restrain firms from actively embracing social media as a marketing tool. The sector has long been looked upon with suspicion and the regulators are sparing no mercy in plugging potential loopholes. In a scenario marked by skepticism and scrutiny, firms are not too encouraged to make bold experiments. The following remain key concerns for the ecosystem:

• Handling threats to privacy of information• Exploitation of information by third parties• Added regulations to the already thick rulebook are disfavored by firms. • Monitoring voluminous social media content is a hassling prospect

CHALLENGES

•thus changes the way 'advertising', 'complaints', 'records', etc. are defined. A simple post on a social networking forum can be construed as misrepresentation or omission to make full disclosure by the regulators.

• Brand management and protection in the context of high rates of fraud and spoofing perpetrated across social media.

• An evolving regulatory framework and an unpredictable marketing strategy imply that firms have to be open to reputational risks.

The banking and financial sector has not been able to hop onto the bandwagon owing to the sensitive premise in which it functions. However, with benefits of such a move becoming apparent, institutions are adopting social media in a more open manner. More importantly, an organization will have to decide for itself, as to how and where social media would fit into its scheme of things.

The pace of social media is unmatched by conventional regulations and


Demystification

Enhancing Customer Experience – Banking on Social AnalyticsVinayak Vasudeva Bhakta, Sr Business Analyst

Pavan Kumar Rao, Technical Consultant, Business Intelligence and Information Management

When was the last time an online banking user was thrilled and enticed after logging into his/her bank account online? In most cases it would be never.

While banking online, do any functionality dote a customer or excite him/her to be glued to the account. Most of the times the customer may be strolling through the same workflow within the banking portal and perform the repetitive activities of making payments, monitoring accounts etc. Today an average web surfer may look at the most interactive website features on even a basic website providing email, news service etc but once logged in to the online bank account, internet starts appearing as if it were a century old. One of the major reasons for this crude design is the high focus on experience consistency and account security which outweighs most custom and personalized functionalities in an online bank account portal. Even though consistency and security are valid considerations, lack of catchy features severely hinders the immense opportunities to generate huge revenues for the banks in the form of increased customer trust, retention and enhancing the overall customer's life time value (LTV) for the bank.

In today's world customer's expect pertinence and personalization. The internet has been flooded by gen “Y” customers who demand superior online experience for everything and anything, even for banking and financial activities. Hence banks need to ramp up and adapt to the multitude of changes happening in the internet world. Rather than consistency and monotony banks need to actively adopt social analytics to mine opportunities to enhance existing customer profitability and improve acquisitions. Social Analytics is formulating strategies and models leveraging data from social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In etc. Pure social media sources may not provide actionable data hence a true strategic apparatus should entail a conglomeration of all three data segments– viz enterprise data from operations, text mining data from websites and 3rd party social media data. Running a model utilizing these three data groups would produce a very interesting cocktail inebriating even the most tech savvy gen “Y”

Inception of an Enhanced Online Banking Solution (EOB)

customer into habituated online banking adding up to significant revenue for the financial organization through online sales. To meet the needs of these bustling online customers a strategy needs to be built from both customers banking and social perspective.

The EOB demands an overhaul of the current online banking portal to create a more personalized and customer intensive user interface which adapts to customers banking and personal needs at the same time. The portal provides customers a single platform to do banking, personal and social activities based upon the customer's interests and likings. The EOB creates a dynamic and personalized online banking solution specific for an individual customer moving away from the traditional consistent portal and experience perspective. This creates an equivalent personalization and stickiness induced today by most other non banking websites. At the same time it's ensure consistency at a customer level by adapting only at an individual level and changing only upon significant updates in customers likings and habits which often will not take place.

Step 1- Market Research – Gen “Y” customer are targeted for understanding varied customer interests such as Blogging, Gaming, Surfing, Gambling etc. The intent behind is to mine community and demographic level social habits and behavioral data. This would enable banks to plan the first grain of population segmentation and functionalities which customers in the overall market like.

Step 2 - Bank's Internal Customer Survey – Next step is a survey targeted at

Phase 1 - Laying the Foundation for the EOB Strategy

Market Research

• Behaviour

• Trends

• Demographic

• Community

Internal Survey

• Transactions

• Account data

• Habits

• Customer

Data

Web Analytics

• Site Volume

• Usage

• ClickStream

• Workflows

Social Media

Analytics

• Sentiments

• Brand Value

• Social Metrics

• Text Mining


customers within a bank and short listing user groups for the web channel. This would provide internal customer level likings and features which can then be compared & refined based upon the learning's from the market research.

Step 3 - Web Analytics – Here the focus is heavily on web behavior of internal customers or site visitors through click stream and online customer transactional analysis. The intent is to monitor, review and analyze the visitors and existing customers on a regular basis to plan the best and consistent online experience

Step 4 - Social Media Analysis – This will be a critical activity and will help in building the strategy that should be in unison with the website goals. This will involve sifting through the social media content and sorting of data of interest through natural language processing, classification and sentiment scoring. This activity will unearth a wider perspective of customer interests, preferences and sentiments.

The above steps need to be implemented in a structured fashion to provide customized and targeted features to the end customers. The steps will provide two critical foundations as follows:-

1) A robust set of habit and behavioral level customer segment data.2) A landscape of base online functionalities to lure the customers.

The above four steps shall be a driving factor in capturing and collating data which will determine the next level of planning and implementation of the EOB strategy by the bank. Once all the relevant data is collected the next 4 steps provide an approach into how banks and financial institutions can leverage the above information to implement the EOB.

Step 1 – Formulating comprehensive customer segments - Based upon the study conducted in Phase 1 there would be enough information to intelligently decipher all the segments (EOB Segments) of “Gen Y” customers who use online banking. The segment may vary per banks need but some of the general segments of the customers could be illustrated as follows: - Frequent Travelers, Sports Enthusiasts, Entertainment Addicts, Culinary Enthusiasts, Health Conscious, Country Lovers, Fashion Enthusiasts, Social Explorers, Tech Savvy and Wildlife Enthusiasts.

Step 2 – Formulating comprehensive “features to segment” tagging - The phase 1 also would provide insights into what functionalities customers use on the web

Phase 2 -Executing the EOB Strategy and continuous social feedback

world. This will enable comprehensive “features to customer segment” tagging to list down the exact functionalities which a customer segment desires online. Some of the features which could be provided to a particular EOB customer segment can be illustrated as follows:-

Step 3 – Processing and aligning customers for the right experience - The third step would be to align the entire customer to the right EOB segments. The strategy could be piloted to high value customers followed by all other mainstream customers. A customer based upon his/her individual behavior as captured in Phase 1 may be aligned to single or multiple EOB segments. All features of the EOB segment shall be made available to the customer once aligned to the segment.

Step 4 – Personalization of the entire Online Banking Portal - A custom built widget styled portal needs to be created which will adapt to the customer's EOB segment features. This provides the customer with an online banking portal in the center and all other personal and social features based upon his interest and likings. From customer experience point of view, this will ensure a highly dynamic and personalized online banking experience for the customers which will greatly enhance customer satisfaction and create the stickiness induced today by most other websites. Furthermore a “reset” functionality can be built in which resets the customer online account back to the base or traditional look in case customer dislikes or seeks base appearance. In this way the solution can handle the wrongly marketed or uninterested segment avoiding repercussions of bad customer experience.

As goes with any strategy, there needs to be a continuous feedback and enhancement mechanism built-in to judge and provide the right experience to the customers. There needs to be flexibility provided to the customers to disable certain features when required. Also there needs to be continuous feedback mechanism from various sources as highlighted in phase 1 into the rules engine to modify certain rules which may not be effective or counterproductive in nature. There also needs to be some intelligence built in to predictive future customer

Demystification

Entertainment Addicts

Movie Preview

Movie Themes

Sports Enthusiasts Culinary Enthusiasts Tech Savy

TV Channel Listing

Live Scores

Sports Blogs

Player Themes

- BooksCooking E

Cooking Videos

Health Tips

Seminar Information

E- Learning

Products & Features


behavior as well as to categorize newly acquired customer. Continuous refinement of the model for better “customer to feature” tagging becomes an essential process defining EOB maturity.

In coming years marketing budget will be focused more on web sites for increasingly internet savvy audience. EOB provides multitude of opportunities for the banking and financial institutions and gives a recurring benefit leading to high ROI. Some of the immediate benefits attained can be summarized as follows:-

The EOB strategy looks beyond customers daily banking activities and connects with the customer at a personal level. This incites more trust-ability of the customer leading to decreased churning of the customer.

The strategy provides an opportunity for customers to do activities beyond core banking enticing a customer to stick more to the web-site and thus improving the brand perception every visit.

The strategy creates the much required stickiness to the customer providing a channel to cross sell/up sells products. Traditionally the online banking portal has largely been less effective as a sales channel. This strategy improves the chances of providing multiple offers thus becoming a gateway to increase products owned per customer.

The EOB strategy presents a unique and all encompassing opportunity for the banks to know a customer not only from his/her transactional behavior but also from his/her social behavior. It goes beyond the 360 degree view being pursued by banks in today's market and results in granular level data collections of the customer.

The market space is getting increasingly competitive and banks today need to provide more self-serviceable channels to the customers. This method improves self-serviceability by gluing customers to the site and enabling multiple functions at the fingertips of the customer.

Conclusion and benefits from EOB.

Increase in customer retention: -

Improved Brand Perception: -

Increase in products owned per customer: -

Improved customer data collections: -

Decreased Servicing Costs: -

Demystification


Social Media – Best Practices for Financial OrganizationsTathagata Biswas, Consultant, Banking Domain Team

Social media is transforming not only the way people stay in touch but also how people present themselves to others. Your profile at any of the social media sites is increasingly becoming an important reflector of the person that you are. Over the last decade, social media sites have virtually exploded in popularity-touching the lives of millions of people across countries, age groups and income brackets.

So how does social media fit into the scheme of things in the world of finance? Apparently, the uses of social media are not limited to “keeping in touch” or “showcasing your personality” to the world. Social media is increasingly being used by financial advisors to market revenue based products as well as by banks to advertise their financial products to a specific, defined target customer base which helps to generate extremely high quality leads and ultimately, new customers. However, generating new customers is not the only objective for financial entities to jump into the social media band wagon. New brands are using social media to launch their brands, gain word-of-mouth publicity which ultimately establishes their identity. Entities providing financial advice are using social media to derive business benefits from consumers accessing their online content and content sharing by other organizations.

Financial organizations need to conduct a detailed customer analysis before they take the call on creating a social media presence. Social media at its simplest is a means to connect with your target customer(s), provided it is used consistently and the content evinces interest in the target customer group. If your target customer(s) are retirees, it may not make sense to create a presence in say, Linked In® as the target users of the tool are primarily active working professionals.

Another important customer attribute to consider before considering an investment in social media is the importance assigned by the customer to his/her online presence. If the target customer is not online savvy, it would make little sense to devote time & money to develop capabilities targeted at the online presence of such customers.

Social Media & the world of Finance

What do financial organizations need to consider before committing to Social Media?

Industries with successful Social Media campaigns

Best Practices for Social Media

Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) have really been at the fore-front of exploiting social media commercially. In addition, the auto industry and the computer hardware industry have also had numerous social media success stories. Case in point-The Old spice campaign in YouTube is one of the most successful ones in history with 50 million+ views and attributed to increasing sales significantly.

The financial industry is not one of the industries which has exploited the social media to its fullest extent-as compared to the FMCG or the Auto industry. Part of the explanation for this was related to the industry dynamics and the target segment interests, but stake holders in the financial industry are now exploring areas of opportunity in social media.

So, how does the financial industry hit the ground running to “catch-up” with the early adapters? One answer may be to adopt best practices for entering the social media universe.

The first item on the checklist for any organization getting into the Social Media vehicle is organizational commitment-both in terms of time and resources to social media. Social media should assume the same importance as Public relations or marketing once the organization decides to get into social media. Social media should not be treated as a side of the desk activity, or handed over to a couple of fresher's (without senior leadership guidance) to figure out. Leadership should be committed on social media and appropriate resources should be allocated if social media is chosen as a vehicle for organizational development.

Any organization with a plan to use Social Media has to realize that it does not control the message. This is a marked difference from other vehicles like advertising where the brand controls the message it sends to the audience. Not controlling the message implies that the audience has the ability to change the message. Trying to control the ability of the audience to change the message could be disastrous for the product on social media. It might be construed as an attempt to curb individual freedom which might carry severe ramifications. This is one area where the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry has got their act to perfection. Before new FMCG products are introduced to consumers, social media has been used by them to gauge potential customer reaction to great effect. Alternatively, new versions of existing FMCG products have seen massive use of

Demystification


social media to be launched and popularized. Being transparent about the product attributes might lead to a successful social

media experience. Social media is a two way street. Promoting a mutual fund which has not had a great history with the message that it has had the greatest returns in mutual fund history might work in print or online advertising (with disclaimers) but it would fall flat in social media. This is especially applicable for the financial industry whose products carry clearly tangible characteristics vis-à-vis intangible characteristics of say, FMCG products. A credit card might carry an annual fee which will have to be clearly communicated to the target customers; however a shampoo might promote itself as a product which results in “silky hair” which is an intangible.

Another best practice that financial companies can adopt is a coordinated and concentrated approach to social media. Organizational commitment to social media cannot exist in non-communicating pillars. One arm of an organization promoting its credit cards via Facebook® has to talk to its other arm which is promoting a deposit account through a blog. A divided approach may result in consumer confusion and inefficiency in organization efforts.

Social media contains a lot of “hidden” customer energy-in the form of customer engagement. Financial organizations which utilize this customer engagement to influence the way customers speak about their products and services would steal a march over organizations which are not able to use this leverage. Tapping this latent marketing tool does not call for a huge investment or a pan-global presence. Financial organizations can be rewarded with expanded markets, greater mind-share and increased customer loyalty if they can engage customers with their products/services through the social media.

Social media, as a vehicle for organizational development holds a lot of promise-if utilized in the right manner. Financial organizations should not be apprehensive of the new media but devote resources to understand the powers and the limitations of the new channel properly and then craft their strategy to exploit the possibilities of the new channel. In an age that is increasingly waking up to the capabilities of the social media-this is a medium that should not be neglected at any cost.

Conclusion

Demystification


Demystification

Social Media - Tracking & Collecting on DebtsVijay Swaminathan, Consultant, Banking Domain

Most of us have a profile in one or the other social networks which we do keep updated. But, if you've got debts and haven't paid them, you may want to be careful about your next status update.

Just like some employers who use LinkedIn or Facebook to verify job candidates, debt collectors are using these social networking sites, too.

In this age, information is power and Social Networking sites which host terabytes of personal data about millions of users are a blessing in disguise for the Lending institutions and Debt Collection agencies which seek out more and more information about their customers.

A case in point is that of a businessman who failed to pay a debt running into tens of thousands. The man claimed his business was in the tank and he was filing for bankruptcy. But pictures he posted on Facebook said otherwise. He showed off his new luxury car and a picture of himself on a boat, fishing off Florida's coast, images that didn't add up to him being broke. Needless to say, the debt collection agency had enough information to force the person to pay his bill in full.

There are more such cases to drive home the point that Social networking sites contain rich information that can be harvested by Financial institutions for lending and debt collection purposes.

The easiest way to reach a person in any social network is to befriend their friends, establish relationships and, finally, “friend” or follow the person. This is the most common tactic employed by Creditors to follow Debtors.

By doing this, creditors can discover valuable information, such as: • The person's current contact information like phone number, email

address and home address • The person's job

•eventually defaults

• Any other information that may help Creditors collect the debt

Though some of the large collection agencies haven't started using these techniques, it is starting to gain some traction. Some agencies state that don't not use social networking sites because it crosses the line of privacy and could be considered illegal under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The law, which governs only consumer collection agencies, provides rules on how firms can obtain information about the debtors' location, but there's nothing in it that addresses the use of social networking sites.

The Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA), written and signed into law in 1968, protects debtors from being harassed, mandates that collectors must disclose their attempts to collect a debt and the fact that any information obtained with be used for those purposes, and prohibits collectors from doing or saying anything misleading in their dealings with debtors, their friends or family members.

Unfortunately, when the FDCPA was written decades back, no one had even dreamed of social media, so there are no explicit laws stating creditors can't use social media to attempt to collect a debt.

Opinions seem to be divided on the use of social networking tools to pursue debt collection activities.

While getting information about location seems to be okay with most, anything beyond location seems to violate privacy. For some, it seems to the last straw in personal space invasion as the emails, mailboxes, phones and now even family & friends (through social networking) are being dragged into this.

Others feel that there is nothing wrong with agencies surfing social networking for leads, especially if the person owes a huge amount of money, and the agency

Assets the person has that have that may be repossessed in case the person

The law, which governs only consumer collection agencies, provides rules on how firms can obtain information about the debtors' location, but there's nothing in it that addresses the use of social networking sites.


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has exhausted all options. It seems a quite creative and aggressive approach for collection agencies though public harassment or humiliation of a user online maybe considered defamatory. Some proponents of this approach also blame the users (borrowers) for making so much of private information about them, public. The argument is that people should not be critical about privacy in a social network because any information a person puts on a social networking site is in the public domain. They're putting it out there for whole world to see and should not complain if it is used against them.

Another interesting trend noted is that financial institutions use the social networks to improve the credit decisions being made on borrowers (though they wouldn't publicly reveal this). It is found that if your friends tend to be good at managing credit, such as pay their bills on time, you are likely to be also. A new concept called "social media monitoring" has emerged because the existing credit scoring system doesn't always perform good all the time. A credit score advises a Financial Institution on how well you have paid your bills in the past but social media monitoring will tell a Financial institution how likely you are to pay your bills in the future.

An example of the above theory is that of a person who loses his job. He may put a post on his Facebook status update saying that he was fired. This will impact his ability to pay his dues even though he might have a good credit score. Companies are developing these algorithms to scrape social media websites for pieces of information which could be utilized for lending & debt collection decisions and they might eventually sell this data to lending institutions and credit reporting agencies.

It is not lending & debt collections agencies alone that use Social media, there was a case reported which involved a woman who filed an insurance claim for depression and had it denied based on photos she posted on a social networking website of herself on vacation.

With the law being vague, it is paramount for users (delinquent borrowers in particular) to be aware of the kind of information they make available online and kind of contacts/friends they approve of in their social networks. For debt collection agencies, this is a very useful tactic to keep track of the behavior of delinquent borrowers.

A credit score advises a Financial Institution on how well you have paid your bills in the past but social media monitoring will tell a Financial institution how likely you are to pay your bills in the future.


Innovation/ BTG Corner

Social Reputation Management –Wipro solution OfferingsSriram Srinivasan, Senior Consultant, Social Computing

Social Reputation Management is a web-based hosted solution through which the organization can know their social presence.

It provides the capability to define and track various online sources periodically to monitor & measure the brand/organization's presence, ratings and respond to customer/market concerns

• Channel Management : Users can configure/define their sources in various channels for tracking their presence

• Online Presence: Provides a view of the Organization presence in various spaces and their activity pattern across various timelines allowing organizations to understand spike in online activity.

• Top 5 Sites & Distribution: Allows organizations to view the top contributing sites hosting information on various products. Provides a view of the spread of contributing sites, enabling to understand distribution of the content.

Wipro Offerings

•their competitors and compare their presence in various spaces.

• Product wise split-up: Allows organizations to view a brand/product wise presence and drill down to individual blogs, reviews, forums and news articles about each of their products.

• Sentiment Analysis: Process collected contents from various sources, using intelligent algorithm that performs a contextual analysis that projects consumer sentiments.

Peer Ratings: Allows organizations to view their Online Presence against

Solution View

Benefits• Enables to collect information in relation to competitors that can be used

for communication and product strategy development.• Continuous monitoring provides early warning systems regarding brand or

product issues.• Allows companies insights into how your brand and product is perceived by

target markets.• Online monitoring assists in recognizing industry trends early on and

capitalizing on this information.• Identify and find new customers and communities.• Pro-actively influence an industry segment and what people are saying

about a company, its brands and employees.

Distribution

Online Presence

Top Hits

Product-WiseSplit-up

Peer Ratings

Social Reputation

Management

Sentiment Analysis

Drilldown ViewsManage BrandsProfile, Channels

SRM Solution

Social Analytics

Responses

Data Collection

Reports & Alerts

Social CornerSocial Cornerthe Banking & Financial Services -newsletter from Wipro Technologiese

For Wipro internal circulation only

19

Puja Didwania, Business Analyst, Banking Domain

Are you aware of social media initiatives taken by Financial Institutions? Link them up.

100voices ABN Amro

Open FORUM Capital One

Smallbusiness online community ANZ

pickuradvisor Bank of America

Little Black Book Barclays Bank

Slingshot American Express

Join2Grow First Direct

Money Manager Blog Fortis

Moving Forward HSBC

The Next Great Innovator Blog ING

My Vault Royal Bank of Canada

Your Point of View Scotia Bank

Flametree Standard Bank

Rush your answers to [email protected]

Here are the answers for July'2010 Thoughtline edition fun corner

1. (B) Where money comes from, what money is spent on and how much money is available for use

2. (C) Assets = Liabilities plus Equity3. (B). Borrowers would have more information than lenders4. (C) Centralized Online Realtime Exchange5. (C) Profit/loss sharing and prohibition of interest6. (B) charge card 7. (B) Compensate your banking institution for any losses incurred due to your

premature exit 8. (B) Collects credit information on borrowers and supplies the information

back to lenders 9. (B)Practice of testing the computer security procedures and identification

lapses before the banking operation is put to risk10. (B)creating digital version of the original cheque11. (C) 86 × 54 mm12. (A) Issuer Identification Number13. (A) SWIFT14. (B) RTGS15. (A) CBS

The winner of July 2010 Fun Corner is Kiran Dhanwada

Feedback &Suggestions aremost welcome.Please email to

[email protected] by: [email protected]

GREEK MASKSBy Channakeshava

It is generally understood that use of masks in Greek plays derived from the worship of the god Dionysus. As a god associated with wine, his followers were naturally passionate and prone to dramatic action. Dionysus was a god of “otherness” and so, when he was rendered artistically on vases or other crockery, he was shown wearing a mask. The first known writer and performer was named Thespis (hence the synonym “thespian” for actors) and he wore a mask, thus setting a trend for centuries to come.

There were several practical reasons for using masks in Greek drama. Masks allowed actors to easily play several different parts, including gods, whose faces could never be represented by a human face.

Masks also allowed actors to believably portray female characters, because of course women were not allowed to perform on stage when the theater began.

In ancient Greece, plays were performed during the day, outdoors in large amphitheaters. The bulk of the audience could not see the actors very well, so a mask projected a character to the cheap seats. Furthermore, the masks were highly stylized and exaggerated, so that a villain or lover was easily comprehended, even by the least-educated audience members.

Actors spent years learning how to use their bodies to enhance the emotional thrust of a performance and to show the breadth of emotion usually expressed in the face.

Actors also had to master a range of vocal expressions. As hard as it was to learn to project to an open-air audience of 10,000 people with no amplification, an actor’s abilities were mostly judged by the emotional strength of his voice. Everything in a character and the story had to come from the spoken words, and if an actor wasn’t skilled enough, the story would not be well told and the play was a failure. The mask gave the actors characterizations that were instantly understood, but it was the voice and body that brought the characters to three-dimensional life.

thoughtline august2010 - the banking & financial services e-newsletter from wipro technologies

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