Читать книгу Embedded Finance - Scarlett Sieber - Страница 29

Tinkoff Bank's story is unique. It was launched in 2006, before the new wave of neobanks. At the time, founder Oleg Tinkov had spent some time in the US and was amazed by the amount of mail he used to get offering him applications for credit cards. When looking at the number of credit cards per capita, there were two or three credit cards in the US and a fraction of that in Russia. Willing to seize this opportunity, he bought a bank in Russia and launched Tinkoff Bank. The beginnings of Tinkoff were dedicated to selling credit cards by mail, which was a tough process that required important optimizations, including tests of font, signature position, etc., to maximize customer conversions. It created the mindset of test and learn within Tinkoff and laid the basis for continued data analytics within the company. In 2007–2008, the financial crisis hit which led Tinkoff to change its funding model, move most of its activities online, and start taking deposits.

Over the next several years, a growing customer base started demanding more and more services from Tinkoff, which pushed the bank to launch a full product suite, including credit cards, personal loans, point-of-sale loans, and eventually secured products like home equity loans and car loans. On the transactional side, Tinkoff launched a debit card, the largest retail brokerage platform in the market with 70% of all active customers in Russia, and an insurance business focused primarily on car insurance. It also moved into the B2B space through the launch of an SME bank and an acquiring business_Tinkoff is now the second largest online card acquirer in Russia.

Over the years, Tinkoff's data model sophistication improved drastically, catalyzed by the fact that Tinkoff was becoming their customer's primary bank and, as a result, was gathering a very comprehensive data set on their customers, allowing Tinkoff to target those customers with the right product, at the right time, at the right price. Over time, Tinkoff has also added external data sources to its model. According to Neri Tollardo, VP of Strategy of Tinkoff Bank, Tinkoff has now received and processed 250 million credit applications since their launch, which means that most Russians have applied for a Tinkoff product. All that data has gone to enrich their data models, which in turn is becoming more precise and now leverages artificial intelligence to refine its predictions. Tinkoff's philosophy is simple: data is used for the benefit of the customer to make sure Tinkoff can satisfy their financial needs.

When it comes to its target market, Tinkoff's customer base has evolved over time. Tinkoff started by being a regional mass-market credit card lender, outside Russia's big cities, focused on small towns where branches were not always available. The launch of the debit card and the mobile app brought a more mass affluent, younger, and digital customer base, for which Tinkoff developed a certain number of new services. While those customers were not necessarily as interested in credit cards, they wanted to be able to use a brokerage account and buy insurance for their car. Tinkoff also has recently launched a private bank service for high-net-worth individuals. Nowadays, Tinkoff boasts 14 million active customers and covers all segments of the Russian population. Neri Tollardo believes Tinkoff offers a product for everyone.

Tinkoff describes itself as a financial Super App, which is different from China's Super Apps that offer services such as ordering cabs and food delivery. Tinkoff's app offers a single view of all available financial services to the user, whether they are using those services already or not. The idea is to increase cross-selling in a way that is relevant to them. Tinkoff has developed a range of content and materials available in the app, in the form of articles, Instagram-like stories, and tickets, that makes it pleasant for the customer to come back and engage and which ultimately drives cross-selling of Tinkoff's services. Neri Tollardo explains:

If they are big sport fans, we would tell them there's this football game on this weekend, they can buy game tickets, travel tickets and book hotels. You can do a lot of lifestyle-related activities like book a theater ticket or a sports game ticket all inside the app, which gives the customer an extra reason to come and spend a little bit more time and do something that they have positive feelings about within the app. Obviously, as they do that, it drives the frequency of Tinkoff's app usage.

Tinkoff has also negotiated rates with merchants and is offering cashback to its users. This strategy is most definitely working, as out of its 14 million monthly active users, 5 million of them are daily active users of the Tinkoff app.

We can't discuss customer segmentation excellence and the success that neobanks have had without mentioning that a portion of the traditional finance service players, particularly credit unions, pioneered the customer segmentation piece for financial services.

Many of the innovations commonly attributed to neobanks using advanced technology to segment customers first appeared with credit unions or building societies. Credit unions serve specific groups, for example, the employees of the same business or industry, and therefore were advanced in tailoring their services to meet the needs of their customers, known as members. There are credit unions targeted toward the military, teachers, Disney employees, and the list goes on.

While there are a few primary examples of credit unions leading from a data perspective, such as the early payment of paychecks based on the simple data of direct deposit information, a benefit for consumers that is still a marquee function of neobanks today, there are some differences for this generation of neobanks. The key difference lies in the neobanks’ ability to utilize technology and data as a primary competitive advantage. Equipped with this information, the next generation of neobanks allows people of different communities, regardless of location, to become part of the movement.

This customization based on data and truly knowing your customer is where embedded finance comes front and center.