Why Banking Struggles to Act on Customer Data
Customer data is among the most valuable assets at a bank or credit union, yet only 14% of institutions say they have a customer profile that works across the whole organization. In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous explains where to start.
Published on November 2026 in Default Category
Banks and credit unions can reach a customer before the account closes by giving the people who serve that customer direct access to customer data. Research from the Digital Banking Report found that 44% of institutions usually learn a customer is leaving when the account closes.
Customer data is among the most valuable assets at a bank or credit union, yet only 14% of institutions say they have a customer profile that works across the whole organization. About 6 in 10 say retail and lending leaders cannot build a customer list without help from IT or an analyst, so they submit a request and wait. The result is slow action on signals such as a payroll deposit that moves. 32% say they would not detect a meaningful change in customer behavior at all.
The barriers leaders name first are internal. 46% say no one clearly owns acting on customer insight, and 46% say data is trapped in the core or in separate systems, while budget at 16% and compliance review at 14% rank near the bottom. Leadership can decide who owns customer insight and approve who gets access without waiting for a core conversion, even if delivering that access takes some integration work. Where marketing holds the tools, it becomes the default owner of customer insight, even though marketing does not run the branches, the lenders, or the contact center.
In this Banking Insights episode, Jim Marous explains where to start. He covers the history of VisiCalc, the next best conversation engine at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and three practical steps: review the last 100 accounts that closed, give branch managers a weekly list of new and moved payroll deposits, and measure the days between a signal and the first call. Banks and credit unions of any size face the same test: whether the institution knows who a customer is when they show up somewhere new.
About: Banking Transformed is hosted by Jim Marous, a top five banking industry influencer and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Banking Insights episodes deliver the most important strategic ideas in under ten minutes, for the executive who wants the takeaway without the deep dive. Subscribe to the Digital Banking Report at digitalbankingreport.com.
