During the recent Financial Times Global Banking Summit, one message came across loud and clear. Banks know they need to deliver hyperpersonalisation to meet customer expectations. Meanwhile, they see the opportunity to win customer trust by promoting financial wellbeing.
Together, targeted solutions in these areas could bring in a whole segment of new customers while reducing churn. But senior leaders at banks are forced to spend much of their time on compliance or dealing with outdated systems and data biases, leaving them with little time to launch or fine-tune new initiatives.
So, how can banking leaders deliver large-scale hyperpersonalisation and ensure customers’ financial wellbeing without compromising on their core strategic focuses?
Strategies for hyperpersonalisation
As Forrester analysts argue: "Customers’ expectations for value and relevance have rapidly evolved over the past years, [but] many banks have failed to change their approach to personalization to meet – let alone exceed – those expectations."
Industries like retail and online shopping have set the gold standard for hyperpersonalisation. Now, customers expect banks to anticipate their needs just as effectively as brands like Apple or ASOS.
Unlike retailers, however, banks contend with layers of legacy infrastructure, siloed data sources, and stringent compliance requirements. The challenge only starts with aggregating data, stretching into responsible governance, avoiding the pitfalls of biased models, and maintaining transparency throughout the process.
Data quality is a critical part of this question. Without reliable, accurate data, banks risk compromising their personalisation efforts, delivering irrelevant or inconsistent customer interactions. To tackle this, the key is data governance that ensures consistency across systems and clean data streams. Another important factor is embedding a culture of shared accountability around data accuracy.
In the end, banks pursuing hyperpersonalisation are aiming to drive long-term customer loyalty and cross-sell opportunities. This in turn boosts profitability by reducing customer churn and acquisition costs. Without this shift, banks remain stuck on a costly "hamster wheel" of constantly acquiring new customers to replace those who switch providers. Hyperpersonalisation enables banks to deepen relationships, increase lifetime value, and avoid the compliance risks associated with high churn.
Success typically hinges on combining three elements: data, customer experience, and innovation. Depending on their stage of digital maturity and market positioning, banks can take elements of the following strategies to build towards hyperpersonliased services:
- Data-Driven Transformation: For banks with fragmented or incomplete customer profiles, the priority could be data consolidation and enrichment. These banks can invest in data lakes, advanced analytics, and real-time processing capabilities. The goal is to build a single source of truth that enables predictive personalisation across channels. This strategy suits institutions dealing with legacy infrastructure and complex regulatory environments.
- Journey-Centric Optimisation: Banks with robust data infrastructures but inconsistent customer engagement should focus on journey orchestration. This involves using AI to anticipate customer needs and optimise touchpoints in real-time. By applying journey analytics and personalisation engines, banks can shift from reactive to proactive engagement, increasing conversion rates and loyalty. This strategy is ideal for mid-sized institutions aiming to improve customer experience metrics without extensive product overhauls.
- Product-Led Innovation: To take advantage of their unique data sources and customer insights, banks can develop hyperpersonalised products and services, creating offerings tailored to individual life stages, preferences, and behaviours. Agile methodologies, rapid prototyping, and partnerships with fintechs will be crucial. This strategy suits banks that already have a strong data foundation and are looking to capture new market segments through innovation.
At the core of hyperpersonalisation success is a simple equation:
High-Performing, Customer-Centric Culture
+
Good Data Foundations
+
AI as a Differentiator
= Great Customer Engagement and Loyalty
NTT DATA helps banks modernise core systems and apply advanced analytics to deliver real-time personalisation. According to our global research, 49% of customers expect their banks to anticipate their needs. Using responsible AI and open finance solutions, we ensure these efforts remain transparent, fair, and compliant.
Promoting financial wellbeing
An essential part of embedding a customer-centric culture is shifting from a transactional focus to one that promotes customers’ financial wellbeing. The benefits of hyperpersonalisation don’t stop at being able to offer more tailored products, they also include helping customers manage their financial health more effectively, building trust, and driving loyalty.
Most banks still take a transactional approach to engagement. Even digital-first challengers often stop at showing balances and recommending products. But in a hypercompetitive market, promoting financial wellbeing is the strategy that will help banks win the ‘loyalty wars’, deepening trust and reducing churn.
On one hand, the Consumer Duty Act and regulators are pushing banks to place financial wellbeing and customer outcomes at the core of their services. At the same time, customers are increasingly choosing banks who offer transparent advice and services. These two opposing forces have created ‘carrot-and-stick’ incentives for banks to run robust financial wellbeing programmes.
To illustrate the point, at the Global Banking Summit, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the UN special advocate for financial health, spoke to the Banker. She remarked: “[Financial health] should actually make business sense. At the end of the day, if your client wins, you also win — you’re going to end up being able to cross-sell much better products and much more long term.”
Yet balancing financial wellbeing with business goals isn’t a straightforward process. Banks are dealing with complex product portfolios and legacy systems that make it difficult to deliver transparent, personalised financial advice at scale. Especially as they compete with finfluencers to appeal to the general public.
Banking leaders should reconsider how they define success in promoting financial wellbeing. Beyond traditional metrics like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) or products sold, do you track whether you’re improving customers’ financial health? Are customers growing their assets? Reducing their liabilities? Building the right protections? As they say, what gets measured gets done.
To achieve meaningful impact, banks must integrate real-time customer insights, ensuring advice is both compliant and relevant, and embedding financial wellbeing into every stage of the customer journey. This requires rethinking core systems, governance models, and data strategies: all without compromising trust or efficiency.
To achieve this, you can integrate real-time customer insights, ensuring advice is both compliant and relevant, and embedding financial wellbeing into every stage of the customer journey. For many banks, this means rethinking core systems, governance models, and data strategies – all without compromising trust or efficiency.
Our global research revealed that 47% of customers want their financial institution to connect the dots between their income, expenses and savings, providing proactive guidance to help them reach their financial goals. At NTT DATA, we design customer journeys that integrate regulatory requirements with customer trust and transparency. By embedding AI-driven tools and collaborating with fintech partners, we’ve helped banks deliver relevant, real-time financial advice that strengthens customer relationships and drives loyalty.
Partnering with NTT DATA
At NTT DATA, we’ve worked with clients across banking and financial services on everything from core modernisation to responsible AI. Our solutions are designed to deliver scalable, responsible outcomes that meet regulatory requirements.
If you’d like to know more, take a moment to get in touch and arrange a 45-minute consultation to explore how NTT DATA can support your hyperpersonalisation and financial wellbeing initiatives.
