In today’s digital landscape, generic marketing blasts are brushed aside, especially in the sensitive financial services industry. Customers expect more than just transactional interactions; they seek understanding, relevance, and solutions tailored to their unique financial journeys. This is where personalization transforms how financial institutions connect with their audience and build lasting relationships.

What is Personalization?

Personalization goes beyond simply addressing a customer by their name. Allison Clark, Principal Analyst at Forrester, defines personalization as “An experience that uses custom data and understanding to frame, guide, extend, and enhance interactions based on that person’s history, preferences, content, and intent.” It’s about leveraging the information available to deliver value at every touchpoint, making customers feel understood and catered to.

The Indispensable Need for Personalization in Financial Services

The financial services sector faces unique challenges that make personalization not just a “nice-to-have” but a fundamental necessity:

• Building Trust: Financial decisions are deeply personal and involve significant life events. Personalized communication that demonstrates understanding of the customer’s situation fosters trust and loyalty.
• Combating Commoditization: With many options available, customers often perceive financial institutions as interchangeable. Personalization offers a crucial avenue for differentiation by creating unique and valuable experiences that competitors struggle to replicate.
• Low Purchase Frequency: Unlike E-commerce, where customers make frequent purchases, individuals may only acquire a financial product (like a loan or a mortgage) every few years. This makes each interaction critical, and generic offers in between can lead to annoyance rather than engagement.
• Evolving Customer Expectations: Customers are accustomed to the personalized experiences of tech giants and on-demand services. They expect the same level of tailored communication and seamless experiences from their financial providers.
• Navigating Transactional Anxiety: Applying for financial instruments often comes with stress. Personalized guidance and support can alleviate this anxiety and build confidence.
• Data Privacy and Security: Given the sensitive nature of financial data, personalized communication must be handled with utmost care and security, respecting customer privacy and adhering to regulations.

How Financial Services Brands Get Personalization Right 

Here are some ways in which several financial institutions are leveraging personalization across various stages of the customer lifecycle:

• CTOS: Focuses on timely remarketing by analyzing credit score expiration. Basic personalization, like adding the customer’s name in the email subject line and body, resulted in a 15% growth in sales. They also leverage on-site behavior, triggering push notifications based on visited pages. Their use of cart recovery emails with discounts achieves an impressive 50% open rate.

Watch the full video here: 

• Policybazaar: Segments customers into those who have provided ample data and those who have shown interest but haven’t purchased. The former employs hyper-personalization, aiming to understand every detail to pitch the right product. The latter focuses on predictive analytics to determine the best offer and channel while gauging the data’s confidence score. They recognize that the right offer at the right time can encourage customers to share more data.

Learn more about Policybazaar’s personalization strategy here:

• Piramal Finance: Prioritizes deep personalization for “Bharat”. They aim to break the inertia of customers who believe they won’t qualify for loans by addressing each individual’s needs. They utilize campaign management modules and customer behavior-oriented information from various sources to achieve this.

Here’s how Piramal Finance gets it right: 

• IndusInd Bank (Easy Credit): By implementing a platform like MoEngage, they gained the ability to understand consumer behavior on their platforms, identify drop-off points, and nudge clients with appropriate offers at the right time, leading to a 20-25% jump in conversion rates. They also significantly reduced the time taken for campaign execution.

 

• USAA: Delivers a personalized mobile banking experience based on “life moments,” not just static data. For a customer looking at car loans, they display car-related information; for someone potentially filing a claim, they provide relevant claims details. They also follow up on human interactions (e.g., phone calls) with personalized digital touchpoints, ensuring a seamless omnichannel experience.

 

• Barclays: Utilizes personalized video to inform customers about their pre-approved loan amounts, leveraging customer data to proactively offer relevant financial solutions.

 

• Huntington Bank: Employs a “Heads Up” tool that provides proactive and personalized insights, such as low balance alerts or notifications about potential duplicate charges, along with actionable options for the customer. Crucially, they also solicit feedback on the helpfulness of these messages to refine their personalization efforts further.

 

• BBVA: Offers personalized financial health recommendations based on customer data and stated goals, providing advice on improving their financial standing before directly suggesting products. Their external-facing baby equipment cost calculator for even non-customers demonstrates a value-added approach, gathering prospect data while offering a helpful tool.

 

• City Bank and Trust Bank: Highlight the importance of secure and compliant personalization. City Bank uses MoEngage for unified messaging with strong security protocols, while Trust Bank employs Pi tokenized sending to ensure sensitive data isn’t stored in the cloud during communication.

 

• Zeta: Demonstrates the power of data-driven engagement, using MoEngage analytics to gain deep customer insights that improved UPI adoption and activation rates across their various business lines.

MoEngage: Enabling Personalization at Scale for Financial Services

Customer engagement platforms like MoEngage are crucial in enabling financial institutions to implement personalization effectively at scale. They offer a unified view of the customer by integrating data from various sources, provide tools for audience segmentation, campaign management across multiple channels (email, push, in-app, SMS, WhatsApp, etc.), and increasingly incorporate AI-powered features for content generation and audience building. Specifically for the financial sector, MoEngage offers features like secure data injection, PII-masking and encryption, and solutions for unifying transactional & promotional communications. Read more about MoEngage’s customer engagement capabilities or talk to an expert by clicking here.

Conclusion: Building Deeper Connections Through Understanding

Personalization in financial services is not just about increasing sales; it’s about building stronger, meaningful customer relationships. Institutions can deliver valuable experiences that foster trust, loyalty, and long-term engagement by understanding their needs, preferences, and financial journeys. Whether it’s a personalized email or a sophisticated AI-driven insight, prioritizing the customer’s needs and delivering value is the key to getting personalization right. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, financial institutions that embrace thoughtful and practical personalization will be the ones that thrive.