Connect with the author: olivia.lui@curinos.com
Last year, only 10% of banks achieved the typical 3% growth target for both customers and deposits. At the same time, the cost per checking acquisition soared to $559, more than twice that in 2018. And only 25% of deposit promotion balances yield new money—the rest is cannibalized from low rates in the back book.
Why do banks struggle with efficient acquisition? Because they lack line of sight into what drives long-term customer value.
The old playbook prescribes chasing product-specific goals, optimizing along a single dimension, measuring results afterward and then hoping units translate to value. What’s needed is a new playbook, one that evaluates holistic customer opportunity, assesses the trade-offs of volume quality and cost and predicts impact before acting.
In short, the new approach identifies what volume in the near term actually translates into high-quality growth in the long term. How? By moving from linear, siloed analytics to AI-powered, customer-centric decision intelligence. Precision acquisition involves identifying the 1% of prospects that drive an institution’s meaningful growth—those that are likely to switch, are open to switching to the bank’s brand and are more likely to grow into a long-term relationship.
Curinos data proves that this kind of precision wins. Precision versus organic targeting yields 3x the funded accounts, and 2.5x the balances.
Curinos Data: The Precision Advantage
(vs. Organic Targeting)
Increase in funded accounts vs. organic targeting
Increase in balances vs. organic targeting
Source: Curinos Analytics
Growth without precision is highly inefficient and, ultimately, unsustainable. Precision through AI-powered decision intelligence, on the other hand, yields efficient acquisition that drives long-term customer value. It’s the next source of durable advantage.
