CRM for Financial Services: An Overview

In a new report, Celent examines the CRM market and predicts that the top 100 banks will spend approximately US$2.2 billion on CRM technology by end of 2002. We expect this spending to grow to US$3.5 billion by 2005, accounting for a healthy compounded annual growth rate of 17 percent.

Despite the number of CRM solutions available and the money spent on these technologies, banks and securities firms fail to make good use of customer information to maximize profitability and ensure customer satisfaction. Our research indicates that only a handful of financial institutions have an enterprise CRM strategy in place.

According to Isabella Fonseca, author of the report," Banks and securities firms are concentrating their CRM efforts on back-office and decision support systems. We find many CRM technology silos do not take into account the various departments at banks and securities firms. In addition, there is a lack of integration between front-end systems in direct contact with the consumer and the back end. The result is disconnected CRM implementations, with no uniform view of the customer’s holdings and interactions across the institution’s business lines."

Fritz McCormick, co-author of the report, states, "CRM for the institutional side of the financial services business lags behind its cousins on the retail side. Depressed marketplaces are making it difficult for new technologies to prove themselves. However, with the recent mergers and acquisitions, the need to provide effective Internet selling tools has increased. We find most of the spending to be on the business operations side for securities firms."

This report is a guide for banks, securities firms, and technology providers to understand the current state of the CRM market and recommends the technologies that support a good CRM strategy.