International Bank Gets Insight Into Profitability

To hit your target, you need to see it.

For Fortis, a top-20 European financial institution, that meant figuring out its customers’ needs and habits — and matching them with exactly the right banking products. But with so many products and business lines in so many sectors and countries, Fortis couldn’t tell which services to focus on and which customers to market to.

Fortis chose to expand a customer profitability solution it had previously launched in Belgium to include 14 other European countries and the United States. With the help of CSC’s data integration expertise, the Cross Border Customer Profitability program (XBCP) soon delivered the insights Fortis was looking for.

"Not only was CSC able to field a team of consultants with deep know-how of the banking business; the team leader was a very senior person with extensive experience in the finance sector and — more importantly — was familiar with Fortis itself," says Ingrid Van Dijcke, Fortis’ head of cross border application services. "These are essential aspects for building a long-term relationship based on cooperation and trust."

Linking management accounting and operational reality

The scope of this project meant that Fortis needed to bolster its own resources with external expertise — in this case, a team of business analysts to translate the requirements of Fortis’ commercial business lines (retail and merchant banking) into a data architecture and workflow for the XBCP.

CSC's role went far beyond database integration. The team coordinated information exchange between all parties involved. CSC interviewed the users, including all the teams representing the interests of the retail and merchant banking business lines at headquarters in Brussels and at other national level operations.

Profitability data: key to decision-making

The initial implementation phase required 18 months of integration work. Fortis has now gained insight into income and costs related to banking products and services, down to the finest level of detail: a breakdown for every product, for every customer. This information is in turn used for performance management. It enables customer evaluation, and allows bank branches and account managers to set objectives and monitor achievements. Product and service profitability provides key decision-support information when designing commercial campaigns and determining which products are suitable for cross-selling.

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XBCP is a prime example of CSC's experience solving complex problems for financial institutions. Learn more about CSC's business process management and systems integration solutions.
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