Security Bank: How data and hyper-personalization can transform banking experiences

With the emergence of fintechs, digitalization has been at the forefront of the BFSI industry, especially legacy banks who have had to double up their transformation efforts.

Leading the banking industry in the Philippines is Security Bank, who shared how personalization powered by data has been central to these efforts.

We sat down with Nishy De Silva, CTO for shared services technology at Security Bank, to discuss how they managed to remain a leader in banking in the Philippines over the last 72 years.

Security Bank knows well what it takes to stay relevant and offer customers meaningful experiences that encourage loyalty and conversions. Watch or read on to learn how they manage their success, and what other banks can learn from their journey to offering hyper-personalized experiences.

Your customers should be at the center of your communication strategy. Their satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty to your bank will make or break your ability to keep up with competitors. But how do you ensure that your strategy and approach are customer-centric?

Well, De Silva highlights that an important way that Security Bank has set itself apart is by putting focus on their employees:

An employee taken care of will take care of customers, and enabling live agents and tellers with the proper tools and data to do their job will make their tasks easier and the customer experience smoother. So, it’s important for banks to consider the user experience of the systems and tools used regularly, how satisfied their employees are with their workloads, and if repetitive tasks can be automated to allow them to focus on more important work.

Personalization is a key ingredient in making sure a brand remains customer centric. But simply adding the customer’s first name to an email won’t be enough to prove to them that you understand them and value their business. Hyper-personalization, says De Silva, is the way banks can differentiate their communication from other brands.

A few ways banks can use customer data to hyper-personalize experiences are:

An important outcome of hyper-personalization is that customers interacting with your brand feel understood and important and helps reduce the need to repeat themselves – making their overall experience with your bank smoother and more convenient.

Like any other industry, financial institutions should keep a close eye on emerging technology and how it can be used to improve experiences and internal processes. One example that has made a major impact on communications is GenAI.

Banks have already started to slowly adopt GenAI tools for customer interactions, perhaps to power chatbots for customer service, or to generate marketing messages. Security Bank leverages AI in internal processes with the use of Copilot from Microsoft to help speed up tasks and operations. AI can be a great tool for banks to use to organize and clean up data, as well as push data from one tool to another so that there is a more cohesive

One thing to always consider is how this technology will make a difference in customer experiences. Just because there is an emerging technology, or hype built up around a certain topic does not mean everyone should jump on it. Think strategically about what this tool can do for your customer and your brand, and how to use it to improve efficiency and satisfaction.

Open banking is the ability for customers to share their banking data between different financial institutions or even with third parties. This would enable banks to offer more unified and simplified experiences for online purchases or managing money and credit between accounts.

As we noted, the more data you can collect on your banking clients, the more personalized and customized their experiences can be. Open banking powers your decision making by enriching your perspective on the customer with data from their behaviors with other brands. Use this strategically to make the customer journey with your bank as seamless as possible.

The channels you choose for your communication stack will heavily impact customer experiences. It all comes back to data – what channels are customers using, where do they prefer to get their information from, do they want to talk to a person or a chatbot?

All of these factors will influence your communication strategy. Security Bank recognized that Viber is a highly popular chat app in the Philippines, with rich messaging features and great visibility among their audience.

Security Bank also uses SMS for promotional, transactional, and OTP messages to make the customer journey simple and faster. Two-way messaging is an important feature for Security Bank over SMS and Viber for use cases that need customer confirmation like fraud notifications or card activations. Two-way messaging is a great way to keep interactions conversational and provide the customer with the feeling that even though they are conversing over a digital channel, they are still getting that human-like interaction that is critical to their overall satisfaction.

Depending on the use case, and the needs of the customer, the message channel can change. That’s why it’s important to offer multiple channels so each touch point is optimized for the best experience.

With a greater investment in digital communication and leveraging customer data, compliance and privacy takes a front seat in how banks plan their strategies. It’s important for banks to stress to customers that their data is safe and that they can freely share their information over their favorite chat apps like Viber. Educating customers on message encryption and how their messages are protected is key to ensuring successful conversational banking practices.

It’s important for banks to understand local messaging compliance laws and follow them closely so as not to infringe on any restrictions with business messages. The same goes for rules and restrictions on each messaging app, like Viber. This way, banks can build compliant message flows that don’t overwhelm customer inboxes and meet the expectations of local regulations.

A conversational customer experience platform can make all the difference in launching experiences over a digital ecosystem. Working with Infobip, Security bank could power up SMS and Viber services and strategically decide which use cases would perform best on each channel.

With a full range of channels, as well as a unified conversational platform, banks can facilitate marketing, sales, and customer support interactions while collecting and sharing important data to boost hyper-personalization.

What’s more, Infobip has localized support and understands regional laws and compliance regulations to help keep your messages compliant. With a full—rounded solution and support, creating digital, hyper-personalized journeys is made possible for even the most traditional banks looking to transform their customer experiences.