Leveraging this understanding is also helping customers understand their own money better too, particularly in today’s cost-of-living crisis.
“Interest rates have been high for a period of time and so has the cost of living,” notes Renehan.
“Now we’re really starting to see the impact of living costs impact consumers, it is becoming more real for many. We see that discretionary spending, such as deliveries, and restaurant spending fluctuates quite a lot, depending on certain scenarios and the time of year.
“It’s clear people are looking to cut back, and analytics can really help banks deliver consumers insights into their expenditures.”
Finding answers in the space between people and data
Indeed, while good data can help provide insights into consumer spending behaviour, quantifying this alongside how humans interact and how they spend is of vital importance to Renehan.
“On the behavioural side of things, we have the cold information and data that allows us to make consumers calculations,” he says. “But the way that we behave as humans and interact with communities is important to understand. And if we can marry local, community understanding with data, that can be a really powerful thing.
“An example could be an elderly shopper, who is very unlikely to change their shopping habits, or deviate from shopping at their local supermarket,” Renehan says.
“Other shoppers might be a bit sporadic, particularly younger generations, but that’s ok, that is just a different type of habit. As a bank, it’s about understanding those habits to deliver the best solutions to your clients.”