Five location intelligent
applications every
financial services
firm should deploy
A Pitney Bowes White Paper
Executive summary
For decades, financial institutions have relied on geocoding and location intelligence
to make better decisions regarding site selection and market potential.
Now, however, the combination of smartphone adoption, mobile banking, and
new technologies such as reverse geocoding enable banks to have a real-world,
real-time impact on every consumer’s experience. The result: today’s location
intelligent applications are more customer-centric.
As brands get closer to consumers via relevant social interactions and on-the-go touch
points, financial institutions that master location intelligence will gain a significant
advantage over competition—the kind of advantage that delights customers, wins
loyalty, and grows revenue.
Location intelligence 2.0
Increase geo-relevance
While only twelve percent of all companies effectively capture and
analyze location data today, a recent study by Ventana Research
reports that analytics, including location intelligence, is the topranked technology focus in 39 percent of all organizations. This
newfound interest in location analytics is driven in part by the
prevalence of mobile devices.
Previously, banks would target consumers based on neighborhood
clusters and demographic segmentations. Now, retail banks can
pinpoint opportunities based on real-world shopping behavior.
The ability to pinpoint the location of every consumer, home,
and business in the context of service networks, transactions,
competition, partners and regulators can enable financial
institutions to deliver service at the right time and place for
every person, improving the experience while minimizing both
cost and risk.
Consider these five ways to delight consumers and grow profits
using precise, real-time location intelligence:
Page 2
For example, today consumers “check in” using the built-in GPS
functionality of their smartphone devices—providing a clear
indication of their most current wants and needs. By gaining
access to this timely and relevant consumer information through
popular social media apps, banks can present highly relevant
offers: When Joan spends a day visiting auto dealers, it’s an ideal
time to text her with a car loan offer. If the Smith family tours
colleges in a nearby state, education financing could be in order.
If Julio just visited a number of real estate agents, a sales rep
with that information could lock in a potential mortgage deal.
“My bank always knows exactly what I need.”
A Pitney Bowes White Paper
Reward loyalty in real-time
Knowing where consumers are—where they spend time, eat,
shop and travel—provides tremendous insight into their interests
and lifestyle. With this level of intelligence, designing and
promoting loyalty and affinity programs becomes both more
intuitive and more exact.
Retailers and social media marketers have already tapped into
reverse geocoding to deliver relevant, real-time messaging to
their clients. They can delight consumers with text message
offers as they walk into the mall. They can tie in consumer
savings for use of a credit or debit card at a specific loyalty
partner store that’s just around the corner.
“My bank really fits my lifestyle.”
Authenticate cards and eWallets
Credit card theft has increased 31 percent between 2009 and
2011, according to the most recent report from the Department of
Justice. Banks have incorporated complex models and algorithms
into their transaction approval platforms. As a result, more
and more consumers are seeing valid transactions declined—
especially when they travel or change purchasing behaviors.
Soon, banks will be able to confirm that cardholders are in
possession of their card by comparing the consumer’s physical
whereabouts with smartphone GIS intelligence. Then, the
cardholders won’t be inconvenienced by unnecessary card declines.
“My credit card provider knows where I am and
that my card is with me.”
Reduce fraud
According to the Department of Justice, credit card fraud
is the most prevalent use of identity theft in the United
States.1 Banks can use GIS intelligence to help confirm
that cardholders are in possession of their cards—and to
quickly recognize when cardholders become separated
from their card information.
GIS intelligence will make it possible to quickly and accurately
pinpoint transaction locations. Banks will be able to assess the
time and distances between transactions and detect patterns in
real time. This will help them shut down fraudulent activity fast,
and limit exposure for both the bank and its cardholders.
“My bank knows how to protect my identity.”
1
Page 3
Location intelligence has already
improved bank performance in so
many ways
Geocoding, mapping and spatial analysis have been at the
core of bank planning for decades. The proliferation of
smartphone devices, mobile banking and new geo-relevant
technologies will amplify the role of location intelligence
in the months ahead. Consider how many ways financial
institutions rely on location data today for:
• Site selection for new and
relocated branches
• Customer navigation and
driving directions
• Branch network optimization • Customer profiling/geodemographic appends
• Target marketing campaign
enhancement
• Branch performance
management
• Market profiling
• Merger and acquisition
evaluation
Deliver local convenience—proactively
When it comes to day-to-day banking services, convenience still
ranks as the most important factor among consumers. Most
banks look at location convenience and retail deployment in the
context of a single mailing address.
Understanding where consumers are during the day, from home
to office to local and distant travel, provides a clear advantage
in planning network expansion, future acquisitions and ongoing
investments. When banks proactively contact consumers and let
them know the location of the nearest branch, ATM or service
center, they demonstrate the convenience consumers crave most.
“My bank is always there when I need it.”
The new location intelligence—
what it takes to succeed
While the concept of geocoding and spatial analysis has been
popularized by consumer GPS automotive applications, businessstrength location intelligence requires more robust capabilities.
High accuracy and low false positives
The ability to translate an address into a precise latitude and
longitude coordinate allows you to perform robust analyses
with a high level of confidence. Leading applications will employ
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/documents/reports/2010/11-01-10mass-market-fraud.pdf, page 5, quoting Javelin Strategy Research.
A Pitney Bowes White Paper
address validation and cascading logic to return accurate results.
In addition to traditional geocoding, many companies have begun
using reverse geocoding for a level of precision that goes beyond
straightforward geo-location solutions. Reverse geocoding enables
organizations to return location results within milliseconds. The
process is also scalable to translate millions of records at the
same time. End users are provided with pinpointed location data
that can inform real-time marketing, logistics and other business
decisions. Ultimately, successful reverse geocoding can assign
each coordinate to a specific building rooftop.
Operational location intelligence
Insights are only valuable if they can be integrated with existing
workflows. Look for solutions that easily integrate with and
across legacy systems, automate decision making, expedite
service delivery and streamline business processes.
The ability to handle and overlay complex data sets is one
factor that separates market leaders from the pack. Likewise,
the ability to perform geospatial analyses to determine
measurements, distance between points, and territory
relationships informs network analysis and map overlays.
High throughput at high speeds
Financial institutions require rapid scalability of any geocoding
solution. Ideally, a solution should be able to process information
in both batch and real-time applications. Today, for example, many
banks use geocoding tools to ensure that decisions on a vast
number of tax assignments are based on accurate location data,
allowing them to avoid costly errors. Many organizations also need
to process millions of location data records from multiple sources
at high rates. An efficient geocoding solution will be able to
process high quantities of location data in a matter of milliseconds.
Single platform for all countries
More and more organizations rely on international geocoding
for insights to support planning and operations worldwide.
However, geocoding on an international level poses a range
of new challenges: address formats vary, different languages
are often used within one country, localities or points of
interest may replace street names, and key pieces of information
not required for local delivery may be unavailable for use
in geocoding.
International geocoding needs to be built on addresses that have
been carefully validated and standardized to ensure accuracy. It
benefits from a consistent API. The richer the selection of highquality internal and third-party data sources it can draw from, the
richer the result. Decision makers must understand the accuracy
of the available geocodes to understand the level of confidence
they can place in them. Making decisions based on false or
inaccurate data costs time and money, and exposes financial
institutions especially to unnecessary risks.
Single platform, modular geocoding solutions provide a
significant advantage. They enable businesses to tap into the
insights they need today, and easily expand to new markets later
as opportunities arise.
Connect with customers—where they are
Nearly every consumer event includes the element of location.
Once the domain of backroom analysts and GIS specialists,
location data and geospatial analyses are being incorporated
by business users across financial institutions into day-to-day
decision making and workflows.
A new generation of customer-centric applications now
provide banks with more effective ways to engage consumers,
increase loyalty and grow revenues—and organizations who
learn how to utilize and master location intelligence will have
a clear advantage.
Pitney Bowes Inc.
1 Elmcroft Road
Stamford, CT 06926-0700
USA
T: 203 356 5000
www.pitneybowes.com
© 2013 Pitney Bowes Ltd. All rights reserved.
01908 (03/13)