Online advancements like e-Banking and various banking applications like TransferWise, Ally Bank, OFX, etc., have disrupted retail banks and other financial services. The industry has faced many challenges since its establishment, and technological advancements have fueled the issues like keeping up with the competitors and leveraging them.
The current challenge that the financial sector faces may be directly linked to the customers’ ever-changing expectations. Like retail banks, financial institutions find it challenging to meet customer expectations when providing fast, easy, and convenient user experiences. If banks do not meet their customers’ expectations, chances are they will be cast-off in this fast-moving industry.
So, how can banks and other financial services industries gain leverage on their competitors? The answer to this is POI data. By using POI data or location data, banks can redefine the entire banking experience for their customers.
Before we go further, let’s quickly recap our understanding of the POI database- what it is and why it’s a viable choice for the financial sector?
Points of Interest data is the commonly used spatial information of a real-world location. Most people find it useful to decide whether a particular location is suitable for business – understanding the competitors, risk analysis, location demand, targeted advertising, knowing the customers, and more.
POI data can help kick start any business with the right insights of a particular location, considering the customers who would visit the store/branch/outlet in the future.
How Financial Services can gain from POI data?
Location data is not just about residential data or any specific address of a place but includes variables near and around any location that can help identify the competitors, risks, foot traffic/customer traffic, phone numbers.
Therefore, today, financial institutions are discovering and exploring location data to improve their growth. So, let’s see what aspects of a business can location data help with.
1. Helps in spatial data visualization: Virtual view of the physical world with polygonal structures can give minute details about a particular area. The available resources with their latitude and longitudinal addresses can provide the exact information to expand their branches or business network.
Therefore, POI location data helps the financial industries to know their competitor banks’ physical branches and understand the competition. Most importantly, location data give the exact idea of whether a branch is suitable in a particular area to make your financial journey smooth and easy.
2. Manage branch locations: Indeed, the need for retail banks and branches has not entirely vanished today. As banks take up different expansion strategies, determining a new branch location is one of the most critical aspects.
If a specific bank has multiple branches in a particular area, starting a fourth would be redundant and a waste of investment and operational charges. But if the competitor banks have branches in a specific place, opening a new branch might not be a bad idea. Customers are likely to shift to a new branch and take their business there.
According to Esri, banks using location data analytics acquired about 30% new customers. Therefore, by educating about competitors, customer requirements, and most importantly, location demand, POI data can improve profitability, performance and help sustain customer relationships throughout the journey.
3. Optimize ATM location: It is common to have a bank branch and its ATM attached to it. But it is not the same everywhere. Suppose, if someone has an account with Citibank but doesn’t have its ATM nearby, it would be challenging for them to withdraw money. Ultimately, this would make them visit any other bank’s ATM for transactions resulting in additional service charges. The bank might even lose some of its valued customers due to dissatisfaction.
Locating accurate spots for setting up ATMs would increase the foot traffic and lead to a higher customer satisfaction rate. Many ATM counters at several petrol pumps or shopping avenues create a sense of relief for many people who need money while traveling or shopping. Thus, location data identifies areas where a particular bank can set up its ATM to fulfill customer requirements and expectations that would last in the long run.
4. To generate higher returns: A prominent example of this is how POI data gave Hedge funds an advantage over industry peers when evaluating investment opportunities. According to Hedge funds, the investment managers use POI data in market research, promising source investments, and, most importantly, tracking industry trends to grow with its latest advancements.
POI data or location data can help the finance sector evaluate investment and market opportunities by analyzing the competitor branches and monitoring the business cycle’s current investment performance. Therefore, POI data serves as a tool for understanding the particular area and making significant financial decisions regarding investments and returns.
5. Location-specific marketing campaigns: Keeping the customers informed with the current and relevant financial updates through notifications via phone texts or emails could enhance customer engagement in the banking industry. Partnering with various nearby businesses, such as restaurants or clothing stores, to provide discount coupons from bank apps would increase customer engagement and increase the foot traffic of a particular area.
Therefore, implementing the advanced step in alerting the customers on various new updates could help financial institutions like banks to take interest and improve customer satisfaction.
Get your hands on our solution
With our Points of Interest data from 5 million locations and 3000+ companies across 100 industries, we give you detailed information like addresses, city, state, zip code, latitude, and longitude, among other key attributes. With 95% accuracy through automated geospatial data aggregation and manual quality checks, we help you redefine your financial expansion strategies and understand the competitors to enhance your growth.
Our solution can fuel customer satisfaction through tailored communication that enriches your customer experience by relevant promotions or discount coupons. We understand the significance of location data for business.
With our solution, you get polygon data with broad coverage of data points to determine exact locations, trends, landmarks, and more with the latitude and longitude (X and Y) coordinates. Get preferred data points in your preferred style and format with a periodic refresh. Hoo-rah!
Are you interested to know more about our POI solution? Request a demo here and check it out.