Lender relies on data science and AI for customers

UnionBank Philippines executives said they are prioritizing data science and artificial intelligence (AI) as they have seen cross-sell financial product response rates double through its implementation. ‘hyper-personalization’ initiatives for consumers and businesses.

Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Julie Anne C. Dela Cruz, Head of Data Science Solutions at UnionBank, said “hyper-personalization” allows the bank to offer financial solutions specific to the needs of its customers, l helping to improve the customer experience.

“So far this has improved our cross-selling. In terms of response rates, for products where we are able to implement next best offer models, we have actually seen our response rates double. That way it’s really improved revenue and as well as the process because we’re able to source customers in a scalable way and implement them into our customer base,” Dela Cruz said.

She said UnionBank uses data processing solutions to identify the specific needs of its customers, both consumers and businesses. This allows the bank to sell products like bancassurance and generate more income for the group.

“Another example of personalization is, in fact, understanding our customers in a personalized way. Closing the loop with customers is important to us,” said Adrienne G. Heinrich, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Center at UnionBank.

Heinrich explained that UnionBank uses customer feedback, processes text messages and unstructured forms to create report files for resolution and implementing better processes and solutions.

“So what we’re doing there is we’re using natural language processing to automatically parse all of these tags and do it in a way that we understand which customer group has which concerns and feels very happy with which experiences. so we can also understand what is high impact,” she said.

Thanks to AI, UnionBank is now able to process comments from “weeks to minutes”.

Going forward, UnionBank intends to maximize the potential of AI and big data to create a frictionless customer experience, executives said.

“We want to push this innovation beyond what we can do today. We have long-term teams, we’re exploring some of these use cases and opportunities further, which means failing fast. We will learn from this. It’s a conscious decision,” Heinrich said.