Consumers have spoken. Two-thirds are looking for a personalized banking experience where products, packages and offers align with their unique circumstances. And ¾ would switch away from their current bank to one that offered rewards that help them achieve key financial goals, such as saving for a down payment on a home or paying down student debt1.
But personalized banking experiences are nearly impossible to execute using traditional banking technologies. Multi-product packages can’t be priced and delivered accurately. Relationship pricing that reflects a customer’s bank-wide holdings and behaviors is a manual undertaking. Customer journeys may be all the rage when conversations turn to the “art of the possible,” but they aren’t reality. And cross-channel experiences continue to be plagued with inconsistencies.
Why? Because banks’ core systems are purpose-built for high throughput, high accuracy transaction processing. But customized experiences? Relevant offers? Relationship pricing? Cross-channel consistency? Not so much.
Unlike most messy mismatches, in this situation there is a simple and even elegant solution.
Personalization Pushes Banks Beyond the Core
For almost 20 years, Zafin’s SaaS cloud-based product and pricing management platform has equipped leading Tier-1 banks across the globe to separate product and pricing functionality from core systems. This deceptively simple architectural change—powered by Zafin’s powerful, flexible and cost-effective platform—is transformational for banks.
One U.S. regional bank used Zafin’s product and pricing management platform to externalize products, packages and pricing for its consumer and SME segments. Results included a 25% increase in deposit balances and a 36% lift in product utilization.
An EU-based global bank used Zafin’s platform to create a centralized product repository that ensured product and pricing consistency worldwide. For just one line of business, annual incremental revenue exceeds €10 million.
One of Canada’s leading commercial banks used Zafin’s product and pricing management platform to reduce revenue leakage, increase customer-centricity and deploy new product and pricing strategies more efficiently. The bank realized a 50% reduction in time-to-market, 70% decrease in processing costs for annual fees, and $10 million in leaked fee revenue recovered.
Customer-Centric Products and Pricing In Mere Months
As digital transformation continues to gain momentum across the banking industry, further fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, some core providers are placing their bets behind Zafin’s longstanding lead. Some are partnering. Others are developing modules of their own that externalize product and pricing from core systems to increase flexibility and deliver more customer-centric experiences efficiently and automatically—without the manual workarounds many banks have traditionally resorted to.
So, what are the limitations of a product and pricing management platform created and delivered by a core vendor? There are several. This is not their primary focus area. They live in the land of huge projects and long delivery cycles. And aren’t they really in the of business selling you a new core?
Banks embarking on core modernization or digital transformation programs can accelerate customer-facing benefits and bottom-line results by deploying Zafin’s SaaS cloud-based product and pricing management platform first. Zafin’s proven implementation model means time to value is a matter of months. With Zafin in place, revenues from innovative product and pricing strategies plus consistent execution of existing pricing structures help offset subsequent phases of a bank’s modernization program. Because Zafin’s solution is core agnostic, and Zafin doesn’t have a core to sell, banks can simplify and streamline their cores without taking it all the way to core replacement. In other words, realize loads of benefits with minimal risk.
1 https://zafin.com/resources/zafins-2020-consumer-banking-survey/
