How Salesforce Data Cloud Transforms Financial Services

Financial services organizations—encompassing banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and more- possess a treasure trove of customer data gathered from various sources such as transactions, interactions, and demographics. The secret to success lies in converting this raw data into actionable insights that enable smarter decisions and personalized experiences. Lacking a unified view of customer interactions, firms often face challenges in delivering timely, personalized investment solutions and recommendations. Additionally, these data silos usually fail to connect with other customer touchpoints, such as websites or digital marketing platforms.

With Data Cloud and Financial Services Cloud, your data—from core banking to insurance—is seamlessly activated for your customers. Fully integrated with the Salesforce Platform, it allows external data lakes or warehouses to power actions and workflows within the Financial Services Cloud. This solution delivers secure, reliable, and accurate AI-driven outcomes without costly model training.

Financial Services Cloud

Financial Services Cloud (FSC) is Salesforce’s solution for financial services firms like banks, insurance companies, and wealth managers. It helps enhance customer engagement, relationships, and offerings, but its effectiveness relies on the quality and availability of data.

The FSC data model includes a ‘Financial Accounts’ object that represents a customer’s financial holdings, covering various account types such as checking, savings, mortgages, credit cards, investments, and insurance policies. It also allows investment advisors to manage assets like mutual funds and stocks. Additionally, other objects define relationships between financial accounts, households, customers, and financial goals. While FSC provides a platform to model and store this information, it does not offer a complete customer view on its own.

Data Cloud for Financial Services Cloud

While Financial Services Cloud (FSC) addresses many industry challenges, it’s not a standalone solution. Organizations can achieve a comprehensive customer view by integrating data and insights from FSC with customer information from other platforms—such as core banking, web and mobile apps, in-branch systems, and digital marketing platforms. More importantly, this unified data delivers actionable insights that enable a seamless and cohesive customer experience across all touchpoints and channels.

Traditional data integration solutions often leave insights trapped in disconnected systems. Salesforce Data Cloud changes that by not just organizing data but driving action. It helps understand customer behaviors, predict needs, and identify growth opportunities.

As a purpose-built platform, Data Cloud connects all customer data at scale, whether from mobile apps, data lakes, or user interactions. It ingests data from multiple sources in real-time or batch processes, harmonizes it into a unified profile, and allows for analysis, segmentation, and automation of customer experiences across Salesforce Customer 360 products. In the financial services industry, the ability to connect, harmonize, and process large-scale data opens the door to countless use cases that were once out of reach.

How Do You Drive Growth Through It?

1. Unified Customer Data for a Holistic View

One critical challenge in the financial services sector is the fragmentation of customer data across various systems and touchpoints. Salesforce Data Cloud addresses this by creating a unified customer profile through data integration and harmonization. By aggregating data from banking systems, insurance companies, CRM platforms, transactional databases, and third-party sources, organizations gain a 360-degree view of their customers.

What do you get?

- Enhanced understanding of customer needs and behaviors.
- Improved segmentation and targeting for marketing campaigns.
- Streamlined onboarding and customer service processes.

2. Personalization Options

Modern customers expect personalized experiences tailored to their unique needs. Salesforce Data Cloud leverages AI and machine learning to analyze customer data and deliver hyper-personalized recommendations, offers, and communications. This capability is especially impactful in financial services, where trust and relevance are important.

For example, customizing insurance policies based on individual risk profiles or providing tailored investment advice based on financial goals and risk tolerance.

3. Real-Time Insights for Proactive Decision-Making

The financial landscape is highly dynamic, requiring institutions to respond swiftly to market changes and customer demands. Salesforce Data Cloud enables real-time data processing and analytics, allowing organizations to identify trends, detect anomalies, and make data-driven decisions promptly.

Applications in Financial Services:

- Fraud detection using real-time transactional data.
- Portfolio management with up-to-date market insights.

Dynamic interest rate recommendations based on customer profiles.

4. Compliance and Data Security

The financial services industry operates under strict regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, CCPA, and PCI DSS. Salesforce Data Cloud is designed with robust compliance and security features, ensuring that sensitive customer data is handled responsibly. Role-based access controls, data encryption, and audit trails are some of the measures in place to protect information and maintain regulatory compliance.

5. Efficiency with Automation

Manual processes are a significant bottleneck in financial services operations. Salesforce Data Cloud integrates seamlessly with tools like Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, automating routine tasks such as customer onboarding, document verification, and reporting. This reduces operational costs and frees up resources for more strategic initiatives.

Organize Data Across Salesforce and Other External Data Sources

Integrating Financial Services Cloud and Data Cloud enables new sales, service, marketing, and business intelligence opportunities. Firms can gain customer insights and enhance revenue through cross-selling and upselling by harmonizing client financial accounts, transactional data, and behavioral data from multiple touchpoints. This allows for personalized portfolio recommendations and automated alerts for relationship managers about significant changes, promoting timely communication and stronger client relationships.

Begin your integration journey today and stay ahead of the curve. Rialtes will work with you to develop a tailored plan, focusing on initial use cases that deliver the ROI you need in today’s competitive environment. Our Salesforce Data Cloud specialists will help you identify the right use cases and timelines to achieve your goals and strengthen customer relationships. With this approach, you can deliver personalized, meaningful experiences that transform customers into loyal advocates.