BTL 766 - Contextual Banking

 

The Banking Tutor’s Lessons

BTL 766                                                                          24-03-2025

Contextual Banking

Contextual banking is the foundation to providing a personalized, ongoing, omnichannel, unique, and seamless experience desired by consumers and talked about by bankers and credit union executives. It includes current data and historical data, providing you with an overarching view of who your customers and members are and where they are in their customer journey. The insights derived from this data and the analytics that follow provide the basis for response to any consumer action or request – across all channels.

This may include routing calls made to a call center to the most qualified agent based on contextual data, or delivering a text message at the exact time of a consumer’s need.

Some of the most basic components of contextual banking include - Time of day ; Channel preference ; Location; Product usage history (including payments) ; Past behaviours and Device(s) based data

Web search history (when and where) - As devices become smarter, our interactions with them change. Devices don’t just respond to our actions; they can initiate conversations and actions when they learn that their users are active and can be approached.

This provides a unique opportunity for banks to interact with their customers in ways not previously imagined. This always-on mode allows banks to be more vigilant on behalf of their customers. They can prompt on certain activities, send them reminders, and keep their customers abreast of everything happening financially.

These new digital solutions can be an on-demand, in-context financial advisor. When banks become their customers’ friend and engage them on social media, they can get to know their preferences. This gives banks an opportunity to tailor their services to each customer’s taste and financial needs.

Key Suggestions to kick off a contextual banking strategy

Product based versus experience based approach - in the world of today we reason in verticals e.g. cards, loans, etc. however, those are complex products for consumers which might need 3 things at the same time. For example, someone buying an appliance would like to know whether they can split their payments in instalments, have it insured and if their card will give them a discount or allow them to accumulate double points for instance.

The power of the ecosystem - The best way to enable your contextual banking strategy is to bring onboard the right partners, not only the technical ones, which are going to enable your platform, but also the business ones. It’s important to partner with fintech or established companies that can offers their services through the mobile app channel giving your customers the best experience and product available.

Build agile organizations - In the world of today banks need to connect their team together to make them successful.

Summary

Contextual banking is going to be the next big trend over the next few years. If Banks do not evolve by leveraging contextual banking they will end up being a piece of infrastructure by losing the interaction with the customers.

Sekhar Pariti

+91 9440641014