Tag: balance transfers

Holiday spend for 2017 was healthy, translating into big business for credit card portfolios. But how do card companies keep the business in 2018?

The holidays can be a stressful time of year for consumers, and also an important time for lenders to anticipate the aftermath of big credit card spend.

Consumer card balance transfer activity is estimated to be $35B to $40B a year. Identify these consumers before they make transfers by using trended data.

Experian estimates card-to-card consumer balance transfer activity to be between $35 and $40 billion a year, representing a sizeable opportunity for proactive lenders seeking to grow their revolving product line. This opportunity, however, is a threat for reactive lenders that only measure portfolio attrition instead of working to retain current customers. While billions of dollars are transferred every year, this activity represents only a small percentage of the total card population. And given the expense of direct marketing, lenders seeking to capitalize on and protect their portfolio from balance transfer activity must leverage data insights to make more informed decisions. Predicting a consumer’s future propensity to engage in card-to-card balance transfers starts with trended data. A credit score is a snapshot in time, but doesn’t reveal deep insights about a consumer’s past balance transfer activity. Lenders that rely only on current utilization will group large populations of balance revolvers into one bucket – and many of these individuals will have no intention of transferring to another product in the near future. Still, balance transfer activity can be identified and predicted by utilizing trended data. By analyzing the spend and payment data over time to see when one (or multiple) trade’s payment approximately matches another trade’s spend, we have the logic that suggests there has been a card-to-card transfer. What most people don’t realize is that trended data is difficult to work with. With 24 months of history on five fields, a single trade includes 120 data points. That’s 720 data points for a consumer with six trades on file and 72,000,000 for a file with 100,000 records, not to mention the other data fields in the file. It’s easy to see why even the most sophisticated organizations become paralyzed working with trended data. While teams of analysts get buried in the data, projects drag, costs swell, and eventually the world changes as rates climb and fall. By the time the analysis is complete, it must be recalibrated. But there is a solution. Experian has developed powerful predictions tools that combine past balance transfer history, historical transfer amounts, current trades carried and utilized, payments, and spend. Combined, these data fields can help identify consumers who are most likely to transfer a balance in the future. With Experian’s Balance Transfer Index the highest scoring 10 percent of consumers capture nearly 70 percent of total balance transfer dollars. Imagine the impact on ROI of reducing 90 percent of the marketing cost of your next balance transfer campaign and still reaching 70 percent of the balance transfer activity. Balance transfer activity represents a meaningful dollar opportunity for growth, but is concentrated in a small percentage of the population making predictive analytics key to success. Trended data is essential for identifying those opportunities, but financial institutions must assess their capabilities when it comes to managing the massive data attached. The good news is that regardless of financial institution size, solutions now exist to capture the analytics and provide meaningful and actionable insights to lenders of all sizes.

This month, it’s all about parties and gift giving and holiday traditions. Fast forward a month, however, and consumers will be in a different place. Today, they are spending. In a few weeks, the focus will be on paying down bills, or perhaps seeking solutions to consolidate or transfer balances. The good news for the economy is consumers are expected to spend more this holiday season – $830 on average, a huge jump from last year’s $720. Total retail is expected to increase 5.6 percent, while ecommerce (thanks Amazon Prime) should rise 13.9 percent. Credit card originations are also trending up more than 1 percent year-over-year as of the end of the third quarter of 2015. So what does this mean for lenders? Card utilization is peaking, creating the perfect scenario for many consumers to seek balance transfers, consolidate debt and search for competitive rates, especially if they’ve been leveraging high-interest cards. A recent analysis by NerdWallet revealed consumers are more interested in shopping with store credit cards than with traditional cards this season, putting them at particular risk of sky-high rates. A deeper look at utilization revealed super-prime consumers use less than 6 percent of their available credit limits, while consumers in the deep-subprime tier use nearly every dollar allotted. “Consumers spend billions during the holidays on high-interest credit cards,” said Kyle Matthies, Experian product manager. “Many of them have excellent credit, but struggle juggling multiple payments, which can lead to delinquencies. Credit card consolidation can provide relief by lowering interest rates and simplifying repayment.” Card issuers that remain passive during this window may find their portfolios at-risk as customers take advantage of seasonal offers. Competitors who capitalize on this peak season of balance transfers will likely be mailing out offers to acquire and grow their card portfolio, as well as protect their current card base. “As banks and credit unions finish out the calendar year, they might seek one last marketing push, so a balance-transfer campaign might be the ideal play,” said Matthies. “Still, to avoid blowing the budget, it helps to leverage data to know exactly who to target – both within and outside the card portfolio.” Specific models and/or tools can identify who to try to retain, as well as provide insights on whom to conquest from the outside. An index can additionally offer guidance on when to lower APRs, sweeten rewards and increase credit limits for specific consumers. The post-holiday balance-transfer wave is coming. The question is which lenders will be best prepared to protect and grow their respective card portfolios.

Card-to-card balance transfers represent a substantial profit opportunity for lenders.