Case Studies

QualiFile® at Work at Union Planters Bank

What's better than free checking? Union Planters Bank has one answer—a customer that comes in the door to open a free checking account and leaves with an IRA and over $100,000 on deposit. Linda Harris, with Union Planters Retail Support, provides a concise answer to how this happens—QualiFile®, the ChexSystems^SM scored account-opening and cross-sell product.

This incident is one of many, Harris reports, that resulted from Union Planters' conversion to QualiFile. QualiFile utilizes a strategy defined by Union Planters that takes into account the QualiFile score (a combination of debit and credit behavioral attributes), policy rules, and an applicant's demographic information to maximize cross-sell potential.

"Prior to QualiFile, everyone was promoting free checking. We found that, in many cases, it didn't matter who was sitting across from a banker, they all walked away with free checking when another type of account would have been a much better fit for the customer," reports Harris. "QualiFile does an excellent job of matching customers with appropriate products—whether checking accounts or cross-selling into other products on day one."

Reports from the FDIC and other sources cite recent declines in deposits as the result of consumers moving their money to higher interest markets, including mutual funds and stocks, as the economy pulls out of recession. Given this trend, it may take longer for new branches to become profitable. Cross-selling customers into additional products such as investments and credit lines becomes increasingly important. "We're glad to have QualiFile to help us do that," says Harris.

Across the Union Planters network, branch bankers report that their model has shifted from opening more accounts—a sheer numbers game in which accounts may or may not have been profitable—to opening more profitable relationships, segmenting consumers into accounts and offering products that are right for their circumstances and provide the maximum value to both the customer and Union Planters.

Other industry reports challenge conventional wisdom that place the first six months of an account as the period in which most cross-selling happens, instead focusing on the first month of a consumer relationship as being the prime opportunity to deepen the customer-institution bond. Union Planters puts this statistic to work, using the QualiFile decision and strategy that takes each customer's history and demographics into account when recommending cross-sell products. "What better time to talk to a customer about additional opportunities? They are sitting in our lobby and talking to us; we have to spend a lot of marketing dollars to get to the same spot through other means," explains Harris.

As Union Planters opens more accounts using QualiFile, they are also looking to Chex Systems, Inc. (Chex) to help mitigate their exposure to risk and fraud losses. "We used to use a primary competitor to the FraudFinderSM product from Chex," reported Harris, "but we found ChexSystems^SM to have superior detection capabilities."

Effectively managing risk is important to Union Planters. "We want to welcome people to Union Planters," explains Barbara Marion, responsible for Union Planters risk and fraud operations on deposit accounts. "While we may close some accounts because of fraud alert information we receive, others we keep open by modifying privileges or setting the overdraft limit to zero."

"Union Planters is really on the forefront, using QualiFile for not just automated decisioning, but also to segment customers and cross-sell," says Paul Bjerke, Senior Business Manager at Chex. "Through regular meetings with their Account Executive and Strategy Consultant, Union Planters continually refines the QualiFile process, maximizing the benefit to their bank."

Summing up the partnership between Chex and Union Planters, Harris reports that, "we're very pleased with the services we receive as a member; between QualiFile and FraudFinder^SM, we're able to maximize our profits from day one while minimizing our losses throughout the period when customers are still new to us."