How Banks are Taking Big Data Lessons from Retailers

The news is filled with stories about how companies are beginning to harness the masses of data swirling around us, thanks to the advent of social media and a wealth of other transactional data. The key challenge is to sift through the immense streams of information and arrive at something useful.

In a recent article (“Banks harnessing big data to analyse customers' shopping habits”), FICO’s own Andrew Jennings told Computing that financial institutions are taking cues from retailers. Each retailer knows, for example, a customer's product purchase habits and preferences within their own enterprise.  But they don't see what their customers do at adjacent or competing retailers. Banks have access to broader shopping patterns than retailers, and both parties stand to gain from a shared view of that information.

And so a novel partnership has formed. Banks and retailers are finding they can better understand and serve their mutual customers by utilizing their respective insights. With predictive analytics tools like FICO® Model Builder, companies can leverage data to create better decision strategies to manage credit risk, reduce fraud, and in this case, increase customer loyalty. Chalk one up for effective collaboration.