Blog · Data quality and reconciliation · Financial services
How a financial services firm separates products held from products used, from the holdings file and the transaction ledger: accounts with no activity since opening, the share of a customer's products that are dormant, why a product count overstates the relationship, and the two lists that follow, activation for recent openings and attrition watch for products that went quiet.
A bank's cross-sell figure is products per customer, from the holdings file. A third of those products have had no transaction since they were opened, and the cross-sell figure counts them anyway. This guide sets out the split between held and used, the corrected measures, and the two lists that fall out.
Per customer, per product:
Held = present in the holdings file Used = activity above the product's floor in the trailing period Unused = held and not used
Per customer:
Products used, products unused, unused share Recently opened and unused: opened within the activation window with no use Went quiet: used in every month of the prior year, unused for the stated months since
Customer identifiers only.
products held = used + unused, per customer
And a product with activity and no holdings row fails it: a closed product still transacting, or a holdings file that is behind.
| Customer | Held | Used | Unused | Recently opened, unused | Went quiet |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4471 | 6 | 3 | 3 | 1: card, opened 5 months ago | 2: savings, FX |
| 2210 | 4 | 4 | 0 | ||
| 9034 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 2: card, overdraft | 1: payments |
Customer 4471 looks like a six-product relationship and is a three-product one, with two products that stopped being used this year. Products per customer on holdings: 6. On use: 3. The norm for the segment moves the same way, and the gap list changes.
| On holdings | On use | |
|---|---|---|
| Products per customer, segment median | 4.1 | 2.8 |
| Norm, 75th percentile | 6 | 4 |
| Customers below norm | 1,240 | 1,610 |
More customers are below the honest norm, and the activation list, customers with recently opened unused products, is the cheapest way to move them.
Activation. Recently opened and unused, per relationship manager, ranked by the product's expected revenue. A conversation about using what was sold.
Attrition watch. Products that went quiet, per customer, ranked by the customer's revenue. A product moved elsewhere is the first sign the customer is.
Holdings as the relationship. The cross-sell figure is a third too high.
Usage floor unstated. A card with one transaction a year is active.
Went-quiet not tracked. The customer leaves one product at a time and each looks small.
Activation window missing. A product opened three years ago and never used is on the same list as one opened last month.
Mapped once, the holdings file, the ledger and the master produce the split, the corrected norms and both lists every month. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The financial services page describes the setup, and the products per customer guide covers the measure this correction applies to.
A transaction, a balance above a stated floor, or a login for a digital product, in the trailing period. The definition is per product type, written once, and on the report. A savings account with a balance and no transactions is used; a card with no spend for six months is not.
Because a products-per-customer norm computed on holdings includes the unused ones, so the norm is inflated, and a customer at four products with two unused is not a four-product relationship. Computed on used products, the norm and the gap are honest, and the activation list is a cheaper opportunity than a new sale.
A product that was used every month and has now been unused for a stated number of months is a product the customer has moved elsewhere. Per customer, the count of such products in the last year is the early signal that the relationship is thinning.