Metro Bank is a high street challenger bank that prides itself on redefining excellent customer experience and bringing personal service back to banking. At its heart is an ethos of ‘getting it right first time’ and creating the most relevant, customer-focused products.
Central to this vision is an obsession with attention to detail which can only become a reality when data is managed to the highest standards. In 2016 the bank recognised a need to ‘do data properly’ by establishing a formal data policy. Essentially an umbrella of principles around areas such as data usage, governance, management and quality, it sets out what well-governed data looks like and lays the best possible foundations for its regulatory commitments.
Challenges
As a core pillar of this policy, data quality was an immediate priority. Paul Silvester, Data Governance Analyst at Metro Bank was tasked with finding the best solution to underpin a program which would guarantee the integrity of key data elements – those relating directly to customers or regulatory reporting.
That translated into three main requirements:
Moreover, as a young challenger bank, Metro Bank is all about agility and delivering efficiently for customers. Any data quality tool had to be on the same page.
Solution
Paul is using Experian’s data management technology in two key areas:
1. Operational Data Quality
With the platform in place, Metro Bank now has absolute confidence in its operational data because Paul’s team can take a proactive approach to fixing issues before they have a chance to cause any problems.
Experian’s tools support Metro Bank by:
2. Regulatory reporting
One key initiative was reporting to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), who, amongst other things perform data quality checks against returns to ensure the data is of high quality. Metro Bank uses the platform to replicate the rules that the FSCS run so that it can pre-empt any concerns the FCA may have and address them proactively. This makes sure that that they are compliant with the UK’s independent financial watchdog to protect consumers’ rights.
Paul now relies on Experian tools for this. He can plug in the customer data, intuitively create the relevant rules by combining some ‘out of the box’ functions with his own, which are easily generated by the user-friendly expression editor. The output highlights which data doesn’t meet the right quality standards and allows for fixes before submission to the regulator.
Results
The solution has delivered against a number of major strategic objectives:
Customer experience – operationally the right customer data, in the correct format, means they can interact and use the bank’s services without issues. Just as importantly, it also powers the insight to make the right decisions about how best to serve its customers going forward in an ethical and responsible way.
Regulation – there’s clear risk reduction from having further confidence in its submissions. This cuts down the chance of regulatory scrutiny or data breaches, both of which would negatively impact on Metro Bank’s reputation.
“Now we have absolute confidence that we’re allocating budget to those issues that impact customers and our regulatory responsibilities first. What’s more, Experian’s platform is so quick and agile that we’ve saved literally weeks getting to that place.”
Paul Silvester – Data Governance Analyst, Metro Bank
Paul believes that the success of the work done to date is also a direct result of the expertise of Experian’s Professional Services consultants. Ensuring that implementation was smooth, they went the extra mile to get under the skin of Metro Bank’s requirements and aspirations to deliver the best outcomes. With a data quality policy now embedded, Paul and his team are putting plans in place for the data management platform to sit at the heart of a structured data governance toolset.