By Karl Pardoe, Regional Sales Manager UK & Ireland at March Networks

Business intelligence technology enables banks to derive meaningful information from masses of raw data, allowing more effective risk and customer service strategies to be developed. The major advantages include enhancements to tactical and operational insight and more informed decision-making. As a result, business intelligence (BI) and analytics are growing in importance, with 29% of banks citing the two as a top IT theme.

With the technology predicted to continue growing by 4-5% per year for the next three or four years, BI and analytics deliver a solid proposition for banks as purpose built orgeneric devices or via vertically oriented reporting tools that leverage analytics.

Why is this important to banks?
The banking community faces many threats including fraud, ATM skimming and cash harvesting, cyber attacks, and online hacking. Although ATM related fraud incidents fell 26% in 2014, related losses were up 13%, and losses through skimming and ATM physical attacks increased by 18% and 17% respectively .So banks need to reduce these losses and one of the most effective methods is by harnessing the power of big data, BI and video analytics.

If a branch suspects that a skimming device has been installed in one of the ATMs, it can take hours to review and identify the right evidence from when the skimmer was installed.

Video analytics, however, can narrow the options beyond just time and date. Transaction records, for example, a credit card being used, or a person detected at the ATM when no transaction was made can help to pinpoint the crime being committed.Video cannot possibly help to prevent physical attacks, but what it can do very effectively is identify the moment of the crime, reduce investigation times and help banks to locate ATMs that are more at risk.

BI can analyse the history of fraudulent situations and develop useful fraud prevention business rules. These include models for predicting a card holder?s behaviour and alerts that can be set up if the average number of daily transactions suddenly increases.

Fighting fraud is the primary use of BI and video analytics but it can also deliver insights that assist in increasing customer satisfaction. These include an overview of branch and staff performance, so changes can be made to reduce waiting times, and analysis of the influence and effectiveness of in-branch marketing activities.