Data Innovation in Financial Services IN ASSOCIATION WITH
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
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DNB: Data Innovation in Financial Services WRITTEN BY
WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY
JUSTIN BRAND
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DNB
Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at DNB, discusses the bank’s three-year journey to a data driven culture
D
NB is Norway’s leading financial services provider with a market capitalisation of NOK 258 billion at year-end 2019;
it is not just leading in regard to size, but also with its progressive data driven digital transformation program. In a Finalta benchmark analysis of the 04
international banking sector, DNB was ranked number one in the world based on the efficiency of its branch network. Over the last 15 years, DNB has gone from having 550 branch offices to 57. The mobile bank has gone from a hundred thousand visits a year in 2010, to almost a million daily customer interactions in 2019. The success of the channel shift is remarkable. Digitalisation is continuing to fuel an explosive growth in data, bringing new challenges and opportunities. For DNB the imperative is, and will always be, to stay relevant to customers in their daily digital lives. DNB recognised early on that it is important to capitalise and store data in a safe and secure manner. DNB’s ability to protect and extract insight from data not only has the potential to create better and more relevant customer experiences,
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Aidan Millar w w w. d n b . n o
DNB
“ Customers are talking to us every second on our digital channels – we just need to listen” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
talking to us every second of the day on digital channels and must have the ability to listen and respond effectively to their needs,” he told us at the time.. This is the challenge of digitalisation that he believes is too often overlooked. “Everyone talks about going digital, but if you’re not capitalising on data streams that are generated through
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but also to form the basis for new data
your digital channels, then you’re
driven business models. This is the new
going digital without listening.” Millar
reality for digital businesses.
explained that his role as the CDAO
In a previous article back in early
is to leverage digital interaction data
2019, we talked with Aidan Millar, the
to reconnect and stay relevant to our
newly appointed Chief Data and
customers on digital channels. We
Analytics Officer. “Our customers are
reconnected with Millar to see how far DNB have come on their three-year data transformation journey and to share any lessons learned on the way. After two years, Millar remains highly energised in his role as the Chief Data & Analytics Officer (CDAO). “It has been hard work, but a lot of fun, DNB
DNB & Infosys on challenges faced by the Financial Service Industry CLICK TO WATCH
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3:00
07 is now in the final leg of a three-year
changing how people think and act
DNB data transformation agenda and
towards data.
I feel that we are well positioned as a
Data is a challenging and formida-
front runner when it comes to data and
ble topic. “It is easy to underestimate
advanced analytics.” Millar says. “My
the amount of communication that’s
role as CDAO is focused on communi-
required to inform people on ‘the why’
cating the art of the possible and the
when it comes to data and analytics.”
need to inject more ‘I’ into IT solutions
It’s a challenge Millar likens to a musical
– going digital to the core. That means
orchestra. “You can make the anal-
understanding your data assets, and
ogy of the CDAO being a conductor,
how data flows through digital busi-
a Data Maestro. When you first arrive,
ness processes.” While strategies and
the organisation (the orchestra) is
detailed plans are important, Millar
playing out of sync! There’s a lot of
reiterates the importance of start-
people doing what they think is right, it
ing with promoting a ‘Data Culture’;
is a cacophony of un-orchestrated silo w w w. d n b . n o
DNB
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D N B S TAT S
1. 2.1 million personal customers.
thinking and behaviour, when it comes to data.” Millar explains. “The priority in a CDAO leadership role is to bring structure (the plan – the musical score),
2. 1.5 million internet banking users.
the organisation (people – the play-
3. 1 million mobile banking users.
(enabling data tools – the instruments)
4. 221,000 corporate customers. 5. 258 million payment transactions in 2019.
ers) and the right systematic solutions and most importantly the culture (the passion for data) to the table.” Millar underlines the importance of simple messaging when developing your CDAO plan and story line – it must be put into a digital business context,
“ We have to stay relevant and add value to customers in their daily digital lives” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
The second leg (2019) was all about operationalising processes and ways of working – ‘Making it Stick’, this was
so it is easy for business leaders to
the hardest part,” Millar says. “The final
relate. “It all starts with people and
leg (2020), ‘Grow the Bank’, is all about
organisational culture. Culture eats
capitalising on shared data assets,
strategy for breakfast every time,
new data models and advanced ana-
you have to fuel your enterprise data
lytics to generate top line revenue
strategy with an organisational
growth and data driven efficiencies.”
passion for data,” says Millar.
2019 was the year DNB capitalised
“The first leg of the DNB three-
on the opportunities that came with
year transformation (2018) was
building customer channels and ana-
focused on ‘Protecting the Bank’.
lytics capabilities in the cloud; including
E X E C U T I V E P R OF IL E :
Aidan Millar Title: Chief Data and Analytics Officer Industry: Financial Services
Location: Norway
Passionate about the positive disruption of technology and advanced analytics on the financial services industry, Aidan is an experienced leader with the courage to make things happen. He offers 30+ years of professional experience – with eight years of top-tier consulting experience complemented with 22 years’ industry experience delivering sustainable change within large financial services organisations. w w w. d n b . n o
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DNB
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DNB & Infosys: A Partnership beyond commitment CLICK TO WATCH
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3:57
“ My role as CDAO is focused on communicating the art of the possible and the importance of injecting more ‘I’ into IT solutions – going digital to the core” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
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ENABLING RESILIENCE WITH DATA AND INSIGHTS
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Š 2020 Infosys Limited, Bengaluru, India.
“ Our analytics capabilities are focused on delivering the right product, at the right price, through the right channel, at the right time” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
One area that has benefitted from such insights is the continued development of DNB’s online and mobile digital services. “We’re looking at digital channel interaction data to assess customer journeys on our digital channels using a leading-edge real-time digital capture solution,” Millar explains. “We can assess whether our digital channels are aligned to customer preferences
a new DNB mobile bank, a savings
and continuously improve the digital
app Spare, DNB Puls a management
experience.” The platforms can also
tool for small and medium-sized
be optimised to deliver highly tailored
enterprises and IPA Insight Platform
digital offerings to meet anticipated
for Analytics to support data driven
customer needs and wants, he says.
actionable insights. All this advanced
“Our analytics capabilities are focused
technology underpinned by data and
on delivering the right product, at the
analytics is taking digital customer-
right price, through the right channel,
centricity to the next level.
at the right time,” says Millar.
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DNB
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“ We work closely together with our vendors to foster a trusted-partnerships where we co-create and deliver value together” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
With the foundations in place, numerous tangible data-driven projects have come into effect – with data compliance and ethical considerations always at the top of the agenda. “Everything we do at DNB is not just compliant, it’s ethically compliant. We’re a trusted financial custodian and now a trusted data custodian; and must not break that trust. Doing the right thing for our customers, is a core tenant of everything we do at DNB. DNB’s ability to extract insight from data not only has the potential to create better and more relevant customer experiences, but also form the basis for new data driven business models.” Millar elaborates on a variety of projects that capitalise on data and ensure that DNB stays relevant in the daily digital lives of our customers. “DNB is starting to harvest the value of data in a compliant and ethical way.” One such project involved an advanced online chat-bot, enhancing service quality and efficiency thanks to sophisticated natural language processing solutions to improve the digital services provided to our w w w. d n b . n o
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DNB
The next frontier for DNB & Infosys CLICK TO WATCH
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5:17
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customers. Millar continues, another focuses on leveraging real-time digital behaviour to identify possible fraudulent digital activities on customer accounts or providing relevant digital offerings. DNB has also deployed new innovative data driven products that provide market-based analysis and benchmarking
“ COVID has accelerated digitalisation and the realisation that data and analytics is the new normal” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
1822
Year founded
€5.5bn+ Revenue in euros (2019)
9,336
Number of employees (2019)
to small business and large corporates.
The data itself is managed within
DNB has also played an important role
DNB’s multi-cloud solution. “From a data
in supporting Norwegian society and the
perspective the cloud platforms provide
Government during the pandemic, by
highly secure, massively scalable and
providing contextual data insights (at an
agile delivery solutions,” says Millar. The
aggregated level) to assess the impact
cornerstone of DNB enterprise data and
of the crisis and remediating policies
analytics platform, Millar says, has been
on the economy.
the establishment of DNB’s advanced w w w. d n b . n o
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cloud-based data science laboratory
Infosys as the strategic data part-
(IPA) which provides the analytics
ner leveraging their capabilities and
capability and the technical scalability
accelerators related to shaping data
to over 40 data scientists across the
strategy, data governance tooling,
organisation. Millar is quick to add that
analytics tooling and data engineering.
DNB takes a holistic approach to its
When it comes to managing this array
vendor partnerships, representing
of vendors, Millar believes that DNB’s
a break from the approach the sector
approach promotes reciprocity. “I see
has taken in the past. DNB has taken
our technology solution vendors as
a different route, bringing in the flex-
trusted solution partners,” he says.
ible, best of breed solutions: R-Studio,
“We work closely together with our
Jupyter Notebook, Spark, Neo4j
vendors to foster a trusted-partner-
among others, for their data science
ships where we co-create and deliver
capabilities; Trillium for data quality
value together.”
and Collibra for its crowdsourcing,
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DNB’s data transformation remains
‘business orientated’, data governance
on course, despite the headwinds of the
toolset; and the Celebrus platform
COVID-19 pandemic. Millar believes
from D4T4 for real-time, tag-free data
DNB has been well positioned to cope
capture across our digital channels;
with the challenges of the pandemic
“ 2020 is the year for DNB to harvest the value of data and be even more relevant to our customers in their daily digital lives” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
and the next frontier of digitalisation. “The investments made in data, underpinned by a data driven culture have enabled DNB to respond to these types of global crises much more effectively.” Millar has observed that IT solutions now have data and information at the core. “2020 is the year for DNB to harvest the value of data to be even more relevant to our customers in their daily digital lives,” says Millar. “Looking forward, our w w w. d n b . n o
DNB
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‘Next Frontier’ data strategy centres
time and resources required to com-
on the concept of connected data eco-
municate. To be effective, a CDAO
systems, ‘Wide Data’ and the adoption
must communicate, communicate,
of advanced AI solutions to continue
communicate and constantly refine
to optimise service delivery.”
the messaging to be relevant to the
As a final question, we asked Millar
audience. You cannot overcommunicate
if there was one thing he would do dif-
when it comes to the importance of data
ferently if he could take a step back in
and analytics in new digital business
time… “What mistakes did I make…that’s
models,” he concludes.
what you want to know!” Millar chuckles.
The focus on reconnecting with cus-
“I would stress the importance of invest-
tomers, not only to deliver added value
ing in an effective data literacy training
but also to generate impactful insights
program and not to underestimate the
to steer strategy effectively, is bolstered
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“ Promoting a data driven culture – to change the way people think and act towards data is all about communication and reframing the conversation to be business relevant” — Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB
by Millar’s focus on maintaining DNB’s reputation as a trusted data custodian. Through the application of data analytics and advanced technologies to optimise both internal efficiency and the customer experience, DNB is well on its way to maximising the value of the bank’s digital transformation to become both a trusted financial and data custodian.
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www.dnb.no