Nordic financial giant banks its future on digital customer insight 

By Rikke Sternberg, Corporate Journalist, SAS Nordics 

A few years ago, Danske Bank faced a number of important decisions on how to keep its leading position in the Nordics at a time, when the financial sector was undergoing rapid change due to digitization. CEO Thomas Borgen made it very clear in a very public manner that Danske Bank needed to step up its game in order to stay relevant, and the bank’s management team made it a top priority to meet its customers in the manner they prefer, when they prefer it.

 “We saw that our customers were leaving more digital footprints and we knew that to compete against both ‘Big Tech’ such as Google and Facebook as well as new Fintech players, we needed to sharpen our focus in this area. Customers are acting differently than before, they expect recognition, quick answers – their demands are on the rise. When you can rise to this challenge, that is when the magic happens,” says Jesper Nielsen, Head of Personal Banking and member of the Executive Board at Danske Bank.

Jesper Nielsen initiated a process which lead, among other things, to the hiring of Bjørn Büchmann-Slorup, Head of Sales Development and Analytics at Danske Bank, as well as a number of pilot projects and initiatives aimed a letting Danske Bank customers experience the benefits of an individualised approach.

18 months later, Büchmann-Slorup has lead the implementation of an advanced analytics strategy and created a close-knit team of data scientists who are helping business managers across Danske Bank solve business challenges via advanced data analytics.

 “For example, we wanted to understand the mechanics of a specific loans market and how we could have a relevant offering to those of our customers who were inclined to use these products. We found out that the best way to predict customer needs related to these loan types were by looking at very specific parameters in the customer’s behaviour - as opposed to trying to decide the target group based on certain consumer segments. Unlike in the US, in Europe we are not allowed to analyse specific transactions on individual accounts, so this is when an advanced analytics approach is necessary,” says Büchmann-Slorup.

Rocket science and company culture 

Creating a culture in which highly specialised data scientists, with PhDs in physics or the like, come eye to eye with business managers with very different specialities and perspectives, is often cited as a challenging aspect of incorporating advanced analytics in an organisation. In Danske Bank, Büchmann-Slorup takes a very pragmatic approach.

“Some of them are actual rocket scientists! But business managers don’t necessarily have to understand everything the team does, as long as we are always able to show that when we get an opportunity to work with them and their challenges, we can make a difference together,” he points out.

The analytics team always ensures to agree on very specific customer deliverables and anchoring the analytics projects just like any other business project in the organisation. This makes it possible to communicate impact and outcomes more precisely.

At the same time, Büchmann-Slorup has been very conscious about how to frame the discipline of data analytics internally and does his best to dispel undue hype.

“We do not actually talk about analytics as a discipline but simply start our discussions with the business units by asking: What business challenges are we looking to solve? Instead of discussing the merits of various channels and click rates, we discuss what our customers are telling us about their wants and need through their interactions with us – and so on,” Büchmann-Slorup explains.