Value of behavioural economics proven in bank pilot

Over the course of three months, we showcased the value of behavioural economics in a large South African bank. This involved two main work streams: the first aimed to educate and embed a common language across the value chain; the second to demonstrate the power of the discipline by applying the science within a live campaign environment.

The first work stream involved a one-day introductory training session facilitated by our UK partners, London Economics. This was followed by eight 90-minute seminars that revisited in greater depth the content from the training session.

The seminars used a combination of videos, case studies and facilitated discussions to explore highlighted issues. Attendance throughout the training and seminars ranged between 15 and 20 staff, from different environments in the bank (insurance, customer insights & analytics, etc.). Feedback from this process was complimentary and positive.

Through the course of the project, the second work stream was expanded to three campaigns within the contact centre environments:
i) Short-term insurance cross-sell;
ii) Building insurance cross-sell; and
iii) Savings & investment upsell.

The three POCs were structured as test and control designs, with the test team’s performance evaluated against the historical performance of the control team.

The test window for evaluating the impact of the behavioural nudges ranged between two and four weeks. The results were overwhelmingly positive: campaign performance improvement ranged between 31% and 100%.