Identifying factors that influence customer retention in a South African retail bank

Abstract

Customer retention plays a pivotal role in contributing to the profitability of retail banks. Within this extremely competitive market it necessitates retails banks to follow a structured, data-driven approach to identify "at risk" customers and to launch proactive retention campaigns based on identified drivers of customer attrition. The following main drivers of customer attrition were identified in the retail bank: * Attrition decrease as Vertical Sales Index increase. * Attrition is lower where customers receive their salary in a BANKXX account. * Attrition decreases as duration increases. * Black and Coloured have a higher attrition rate than White and Asian. A literature review was conducted to identify the possible independent variables of customer retention and the concept of the profitable customer was addressed throughout proposed conceptual model was developed, signifying the best fit to identify drivers of customer retention in the retail bank. The analytical tool, SAS was used for data collection and statistical analyses of the data. This high-performance analytics assisted in providing the retail bank with valuable insight into how to successfully manage risk, retain profitable customers, improve operational efficiency and differentiate them in the marketplace for competitive advantage.