Big Data case study: OCBC 360 Account

Case Study: OCBC 360 Account

Context

A key segment for OCBC is the emerging affluent or young professionals. Various studies and surveys had shown this segment as having a “promiscuous” relationship with banks. The objective for OCBC, therefore, was to become the key operating account for this target audience and not the secondary account. There was a need to deepen the relationship.

OCBC’s 360 Account was first launched in July 2013, rewarding customers with a higher interest rate for doing more online banking with the OCBC Bank. Customers who performed any two online banking transactions would earn 1.28% p.a. on their account balances. Within seven months, more than 16,000 accounts were opened.

Customer insights showed that the ease and convenience of operating an account was one of the key reasons before starting a new primary bank relationship.

Given the good response to the initial launch of the OCBC 360 Account, the product was enhanced to reward customers beyond doing online banking transactions with the bank in April this year. The enhanced OCBC 360 Account enables eligible customers to earn interest rates of up to 3.05% p.a. when they perform everyday banking transactions. (See table )

Strategy/execution

With the help of data-driven insights, OCBC embarked on carving out a strategy and executing it. It looked at the profile of these professionals and figured out how many were existing OCBC customers, using primary banking, what services they used and so on.

It also leveraged data to study the underlying impact on the profitability of the bank – did it make financial sense to develop a product around this area or not. Analytics was leveraged to identify the opportunity here. Propensity modelling was carried out to see how many people would take up this offer and focus group discussions helped the bank understand what would make customers open such an account.

The ease of opening the account was identified as the key enabler. OCBC enabled account opening through simply using the mobile phone.

Donald Richard MacDonald, head, group customer analytics and decisioning, group customer experience, explains: “We designed this by bringing consumers to our experience lab and asking them to try and open the account. We had microphones and cameras to monitor the experience and make changes.

“We did a lot of testing. It’s a complex proposition. We went thorough six iterations of the campaign before we launched.”

The next area where insights came in was measurement. The product managers were provided with dashboards to see how many were actually taking this up and fulfilling all three criteria to get the interest rates promised. “They could do a profile analysis; dice and slice the data whichever way they wanted and track the customer journey,” he said.

Ling Seng Chuan, head of deposits at OCBC Bank, said: “The reason for the popularity of the OCBC 360 Account, especially with young professionals, is by no means a coincidence. All we did was to listen to them and create a bank account they wanted – a simple and rewarding one.”

“OCBC Bank continues to be a trailblazer in banking innovation and the OCBC 360 Account was launched as the first-of-its-kind in Singapore as a direct response to customers’ needs. We are passionate about not only supporting, but also enhancing our customers’ banking relationships with us, and will continue to create innovative products and services to make banking easy and accessible.”

Results

• More than 18,000 new accounts were opened within the first month.
• Seventy per cent of customers are PMETs.
• Thirty per cent were young professionals aged 23 to 29.
• The number of OCBC 360 account holders who have at least one OCBC credit card grew by eight times.
• Positive buzz around the product on social media.