Vanguard

Business Challenge

Vanguard’s retail division (RIG) has traditionally served mass-affluent clients with an efficient, generalized approach. Over the years, Vanguard has made several attempts to enhance and personalize the client experience, but these earlier efforts were neither holistic nor sustainable because they were missing at least one of the following key differentiators: actionable, analytic-driven insights at the client level, proper service delivery infrastructure, and partnerships between the analytics center of excellence and the business.

Analytics Solution

The core of Vanguard’s program was to take a new, data-driven approach to understanding its clients. The company assessed clients on three core dimensions:

• Clustering techniques to identify distinct client behavioral clusters

• Individual client opportunity estimating potential asset consolidation and growth potential for each client

• A deeper understanding of the cost to serve client, leveraging an activity based cost methodology

Impact

Through a tight partnership between Vanguard’s analytics and business teams, the company matched education and offers to likely service and product affinities, resulting in more relevant discussions with clients, improved efficiency, and better leads. Highlights of some of the improvements experienced include:

• Targeted clients provided were four times as likely to add a bank to their account when compared to a control group

• Targeted clients provided with a rollover campaign generated a response rate twice that of the control group and had an average rollover amount of twice as large as the control group

• 51 percent higher cash flow and a 50 percent higher lead rate for advice compared to the control group

• Reduced phone volume by 42 percent among select audiences

The impact of this approach reverberated throughout Vanguard’s consumer direct investor business, creating a lasting shift in thinking on how the company can better align with client needs.