Boeing Employees' Credit Union
Situation
Boeing Employees' Credit Union (BECU) is the largest credit union in Washington State and one of the top five financial cooperatives in the United States. BECU meets the banking needs of approximately 625,000 members through two full-service financial centers and more than 45 branches.
To better serve members and increase revenue in a highly competitive market, BECU launched a company-wide initiative to improve customer satisfaction. This project focused on providing members with more access to their money – specifically, allowing larger ATM withdrawals and more provisional credit for checks deposited. BECU believed that allowing members to access cash more conveniently would improve retention and generate additional revenue. It also sought to optimize direct marketing campaigns by improving response rates and lowering acquisition costs.
Challenge
- Enable members to access the highest amount of money possible while limiting risk to the credit union
- Improve marketing campaign lift rates and reduce per-unit acquisition costs
- Increase the number of consumers qualifying for membership
- Identify locations for new branches and help existing branches operate more profitably
Solution
BECU built a risk score model and embedded it in the daily transactions processing system to automatically determine how much cash each member can withdraw from an ATM or receive when making deposits. Advanced analytical techniques also help BECU target the consumers most likely to respond to marketing campaigns, and identify the most productive locations for new BECU branches based on factors such as existing members, consumer deposit and loan demand data.
“IBM® SPSS® Statistics enables us to get full mileage out of our data. The result is that we saved over $1 million dollars annually, increased revenue and member satisfaction.”-– Calvin Bierley, Market Research Analyst
Business Impact
- Saved an estimated $1 million annually in staffing costs by automating provisional credit decisions
- Gained $600,000 in revenue from a combination of member retention and new member acquisition
- Achieved a 20 to 30% lift rate on direct mail campaigns
- Increased net promoter metric of those very likely to recommend BECU by 6% points
- Identified most productive locations for new BECU branches
