Good data and data strategies allow organizations to measure and establish baselines, benchmarks, and goals to keep moving in the area of specialization. The importance of data is indispensable and to help us understand it better, CULytics organized a virtual Summit in which Ken Senus, Chief Operating Officer at St. Mary Bank explained the Data Journey.

Ken holds 25+ years of banking experience and oversees operational strategies to help the bank in increasing memberships and geographic presence. St. Mary’s Bank is the first Credit Union in the United States, started in 1908. It is an inviting and inclusive credit union that strives to create opportunities for individuals, businesses, and families in New England.

Followings are the highlights of the Data Journey of the St. Mary’s Bank to build analytical practice:

• The data journey started in 2014 with Data Cleaning - in preparation for the upcoming conversion effort.
• In 2015, for Core Data Conversion- A Data Warehouse was established for reporting purposes. An interactive tool –Workbenches- is used that allows the management to look at the data they want. This eases the workload of data teams to continuously change dashboards and reports. A workbench gives a series of drop-down and filters that managers can easily look at the desired information. This way, the Loan Workbench can help in filtering the loans in a particular time period with respect to the type and other features as per the requirements. Similar is the case with the Deposit Workbench; it helps in looking at where the member is putting his/ her money.
• In 2017, we focused on creating workbenches for teams. For this, we used interactive analytics to become more strategic. In 2014, we build a data warehouse with the help of Arkatecture. It helped in getting the desired data but a time drain of IT staff started occurring. Now, we are using Arkalytics Cloud-Based Solutions. It converted all workbenches/ dashboards/ and extracts from in-house solutions. Administration and day-to-day support activities are now done with Arkatecture. Arkalytics team is available to build custom solutions if needed. Now, our IT staff can focus on strategic jobs and rest assured for the data requirements.

Also, we are using Development Sandbox. Everything that we have on the Arkalytics platform, a copy of it is available here. The plus point - we can play with things here and make changes as per the need. It helps in reducing the dependency and trying new things without modifying the actual system.

Now, to become more strategic, dashboards are introduced to enhance strategic member interaction. The usage of the dashboard can be understood with the followings:

• Member Mortgage Payments: People are associated with more than one financial institution. SMB data team pulls ACH data to see if the members have mortgages outside of St. Mary’s Bank. Data information can be used for direct marketing campaigns that are very successful in gaining refinanced mortgages.
• Marketing Automation Paths from Data Warehouse:
  • New Member Onboarding: When a member opens a new account, he/ she receives a follow-up email informing about the account and offer them additional services at 5, 29, 59, and 89 days from the time of opening.
  • Wallet Pay:An email is triggered to any member who signs up for the wallet.
  • Maturing Auto Loans: Prior to the maturity of a member’s auto loan they receive an email inviting them to apply for the next loan and take advantage of MRC among other services.

Data warehouse not only helps business to grow but also useful to look at data & what is happening with our members. This is a great tool to look at the connected dealers, more engaged dealers, and the dealers which bring more business.

Also, it is useful to illustrate month-by-month activity with credit scores coming of each dealer, delinquencies, LTV, etc. Everyone has a core system that shows the 360 degree view i.e., what accounts you have, different relationships, etc.

VIEW THE FULL SESSION HERE