Engaging customers with a user-friendly system and the right data

A variety of data sources and an intuitive user interface is helping financial advisors communicate clearly with their customers.

In 2013, Lån & Spar Bank was drawing up plans about the future customer experience for its clients.

“We decided that all data about a customer’s financial situation should be available in an easily accessible form when meeting with that customer. Our vision was that it should be easy to play around with different financial scenarios together with the customer,” explains Casper Gjerris, CIO & COO at Lån & Spar Bank.

Gjerris and his staff thought they had to build a new advisory system on their own, but a demonstration of the Advisor system from Festina Finance in 2014 changed their minds.

“We realised immediately that there was a very good match between our requirements and their system,” Gjerris says.

From Wealth Management to Financial Advice
The only challenge was that the system was not directly targeting banking.

“The Advisor system is based on several iterations from the founder Morten Schantz’ more than 25 years’ experience in developing advisory systems for the insurance and pension industry,” explains Mikael Braagaard, CEO at Festina Finance.

Despite this, Lån & Spar Bank found the features of the system very compelling, so a cooperation between Festina Finance and the bank began.

User-friendly interface and smart data collection
One of the most attractive features of Advisor is the high number of publicly available data feeds. Pension systems, the Danish Tax Authorities and other data sources feed financial data into Advisor after the customers have given their consent. This data is topped up with data from other sources (e.g. Statistics Denmark), which give Advisor a very powerful data foundation for creating different kind of “what if” scenarios.

“The customer and the financial advisor do not have to enter a lot of information. They get instant feedback on how different financial scenarios would play out for a household. What happens if they buy an apartment in Copenhagen? What if they want a bigger car?” Gjerris explains.

One of the visual feedbacks of the system is a speedometer that veers between green, yellow and red to indicate how financially stretched a household would be in different situations.
“Quick and easy simulation means the customer can be engaged in a dialogue. Both our customers and employees are happy with the system,” Gjerris says.

Denmark, Nordics, England..?
Today, Lån & Spar Bank’s IT-hosting and -services company, SDC, is offering the solution to more than 120 Nordic banks. Besides SDC, Festina Finance has also signed a partnership with Edlund for pension companies.

In England, Festina Finance is cooperating with the Building Societies Association.
“We have to ask the customer to enter a bit more information as we can't automatically retrieve as much information from public data sources as we can in Denmark. We do, however, plan to interface with Land Registry, Experian and other sources,” Braagaard says.
Festina Finance are currently implementing Advisor together with a large building society and is in dialogue with several other companies in the UK.

About Lån & Spar
Lån & Spar has more than 150,000 customers and 20 counselling centers throughout Denmark, with approximately 400 employees. With a focus on competency and personal advice, Lån & Spar sets itself high standards in order to be an attractive option for its customers.