Banking

Banking and financial establishments are exposed to aggressive competition, where the transformation of customer information into customer knowledge and actions is essential for customer conquest, loyalty development, and profitable sales activities. The implementation of the MiFID and the impact of SEPA both force banks to adapt their marketing and sales practices. The reality of greater competition and regulation makes customer conquest, loyalty and portfolio development using multi-channel communications, more complex.

Banking and Financial institutions are some of Soft Computing’s earliest customers.  Such companies, beginning in the early 1990s, were some of the first to develop client databases with detailed behavioural information.
Soft Computing’s expertise covers all banking and financial functions: retail and investment banking, assets management, capital markets, credit establishments, and private baking.  We intervene at all levels of the value chain: strategic marketing (segmentation, customer value, personalized relations, etc.), operational marketing (campaigns, targeting, etc.), multi-channel distribution, and technological solutions for customer knowledge and relationships.

We regularly provide banks and financial institutions with value-added services:

• Data enrichment 
• Set-up of qualified “prospect” databases using problem-specific files (insurance, credit, savings, etc.) or customer segmentation, 
• Data analysis statistics and customer behaviour data so as to determine the different axes of customer value: penchant, risk, potential, 
• Market studies so as to validate, in the field, specific behaviours, such as attrition, the role of multi-banking services amongst a population, or satisfaction studies, 
• Process definition and optimization of customer contacts, coordinated with management and preferred customer media: call centre or sales visit scenarios, defined in function of a customer’s interests, segment, penchant, his use of internet and other multimedia, followed by log-in, pages visited, connection time, and the analysis other data specific to such simulations, 
• Design and set-up of marketing campaigns and of direct sales networks, including national deployment, 
• Optimization of customer portfolios, contacts, sales force and sales capacity according to customer segments, evaluated potential and differentiators, 
• The mastery of risk and defaulting, by conforming systems and processes with Basel II standards and by revising credit extension processes and individual credit risk, 
• Automated fraud detection: Evolving statistical methods and identification criteria now allow us to generalize and diffuse expert knowledge concerning the detection of fraudulent acts, notably for fraudulent claims and transactions.

Soft Computing handles all or part of banking information systems:

Finance:

• Credit (leases, specialized loans, etc.),
• Bank liabilities,
• Guarantees and risks (Basel II credit policies, scoring, processes, other party transactions).

Banking

• Asset Management (portfolio management, balancing, rate derived products, stock options, futures pricing, etc.),
• Payment methods (cash, check, SIT inter-bank payment system),
• Accounts management,
• Foreign operations (crédoc, remdoc, Swift, Fix),
• Stocks, shares and securities,
• Settlement/delivery,
• Cash management.

References

• Process modelling (marketing, telesales, etc.),
• Business data organization (customers, structure, operations, etc.).

Centralized functions

• Banking and analytical compatibility,
• Marketing (strategic and operational), project management, loyalty development, customer value,
• Sales (multiple service delivery channels, project management),
• Data flows (enrichment and burn-in),
• Indicators (quality studies, panels).

Selected examples

• Banque de France:
  Assisted the Bank of France with the "INSYS” project: Decisional information reporting and management program for payment systems.
• Caisse d’Epargne (Group):
  Implementation of campaign process management system for all 29 front offices
• Caisse d’Epargne (Group):
  Campaign management and implementation of customer knowledge program for all group front offices and subsidiaries. The project was transversal, uniting customer risk, sales processes and regulations related to customer data.
• Caisse d'Epargne Finance:
  Established a customer knowledge data warehouse for "Basel II” and risk management.
• CCF:
  Designed and built a customer data warehouse allowing for improved operational data mart alimentation and operational marketing.
• CDC IXIS AM:
  Project Guidelines: Assisted in the development and implementation of the “Contractual, portfolio-related constraint data warehouse – CDC Ixix Asset Management” project.
• Project Track Portfolio system (TPS):
  Assisted in the development and implementation of data centralization project for CDC Ixis Asset Management project.
• Crédit Agricole:
  Designed implementation strategy for a risk management data warehouse.
• Crédit Lyonnais:
  Assisted in the development and implementation of sales commissioning system (to motivate sales forces) for the Head of Specialized Markets.
• Crédit Mutuel / Sodelem:
  Assisted in the implementation of Customer Relationship Management system.
• Ecureuil Gestion:
  Developed customer data warehouse and customer segmentation.
• ING Belgium:
  "Basel II" risk management system for individual and professional customers.
• La Poste:
  Fieldwork study for the validation of customer segmentation.
• Meeschaert:
  Provided consulting for and set-up of sales force automation system.
• Société Générale Investment Banking:
  › Implemented decisional system for traders across Europe,
  › Developed portfolio management tools - "Stock Derivatives Index" - for front, middle and back offices,
  › Developed intranet for the “unique customer account reporting” project,
  › Defined CRM technical architecture.
• Société Générale Retail Banks:
  › Managed Siebel project, appraisal and interfacing with software editor,
  › Administered DB2 database,
  › Developed interfaces between DB2 and Siebel,
  › Tierce Maintenance Applicative for Customer Relations Services – an application for managing links between third parties and delayed products and services (DB2, Websphere, Siebel),
  › Implemented webMethods integration platform for improved multi communication channel exchanges.
  › Set-up of new management system, downstream of the existing Siebel-based Customer Relationship Management system.
• UBP:
  Established customer data warehouse and decisional system for billing and enterprise risk tracking.

Main References

Banque Populaire, BNP PARIBAS, Caisse d’Epargne, Cetelem, Cofidis, Cofinoga, Crédit Agricole, Crédit du Nord, Crédit Mutuel, Finaref, Franfinance, GE Money Bank, HSBC, ING, La Banque Postale, LCL, Mona Banq, Société Générale, UCB.