Solving the ‘Big Data’ Challenge

We have undeniably entered the age of “Big Data.” Companies across industries have dedicated teams, budget, and time to execute against data-driven strategies that push their organizations forward. While the ROI of a data-driven strategy is undeniable, the process of getting there is much easier said than done.

Often, the challenge for companies lies with the task of taking the massive amount of data that’s produced and turning it into insights — coupled with a need to do so as quickly as possible. In our recent survey of Fortune 500 Chief Data Officers, 70% of respondents identified “decreasing time to insight” as their number one priority, with plans to invest heavily in this area over the next 5 years. Any tools that help organizations make sense of their data and improve experiences for their customers have the potential to provide transformational value.

While these trends hold true across all industry verticals, financial services provide a particularly unique and significant opportunity due to the volume and importance of the data collected. Within this sector, data is constantly generated through every single transaction, critical to informing product decisions by banks/fintechs (what loan rate should we offer?), and critical to driving daily decisions of consumers globally (how much money do I spend on coffee? Can I afford a house?). Any platform that can make the collection, transformation, and use of this data more efficient and insightful has the potential to truly transform the entire category. That’s a big opportunity.

Financial services institutions agree, and are actively working to leverage the massive amount of data they collect to improve customer experiences and empower the next generation of financial decision-makers. The global financial services sector spends $400B on IT today, specifically earmarking $100B for digital transformation initiatives like offering personalized customer experiences, or driving data-driven decisions on product offerings.

But where exactly is this budget being spent?

The digital transformation journey within Financial Institutions

Banks and fintechs are racing to make their data useful for one prime reason: to improve the customer experience. 58% of retail bank leadership teams highlight ‘removing friction from the customer journey’ as their top priority, followed closely by ‘the use of big data, AI, and advanced analytics’.

Simultaneously, consumers are demanding premium digital experiences within banking, highlighting the need for both easy-to-use applications, and personalized data and recommendations. In our conversations with innovation leaders at large financial institutions, it is clear that they are ready and willing to invest, but are struggling to find a solution that allows them to do both: seamlessly collect and make sense of data, and leverage it to improve their end customer experience.

That’s why we’re excited to partner with MX, the next generation data platform for financial institutions. With products that help aggregate, analyze and integrate data into end customer products (like mobile applications and Personal Financial Management tools), MX helps financial institutions make full use of their data, personalize their products, and transform the way they engage with their customers.

MX: Powering the next generation of financial data

MX’s strategic position across the data pipeline (aggregation, enhancement, and experience) puts them in a unique position to truly change the way we leverage financial data. Without MX, financial institutions struggle to truly make use of the massive amount of data they collect. Large financial institutions work to build capabilities internally, often spending millions of dollars with large teams to reach an unsatisfactory result. Others look externally to find ways to build a high quality digital experience for their customers, cobbling together solutions across a variety of vendors. With MX, they have a clean and compelling data platform coupled with a high quality end-user experience, out of the box.

How did MX build such a compelling solution? If you got the chance to meet with Ryan Caldwell, Brandon Dewitt and the rest of the MX team, it would suddenly be clear. This group has a relentless focus on excellence. With years of experience working with financial institutions, understanding the needs of their customers and the evolution of the market, we can’t think of a better team to tackle this opportunity.

Their deep understanding of their customers is clear when you talk to their clients — the platform quickly becomes a ‘must-have’ that fuels the core of their digital strategy.

Our conversations with customers like BBVA and BECU highlighted that understanding their data with the help of MX has been transformational, and opens up significant opportunities to improve their offerings. While some customers use the MX data platform to inform product and marketing strategy, others work with MX to provide personalized mobile applications to their end customers. Regardless of which value proposition got them hooked, customers indicated a consistent appetite to continue to grow the partnership with MX.

CapitalG’s investment in MX

With a massive market opportunity, raving fans as customers, and an extremely thoughtful team, we’re so excited to watch what MX can accomplish over the coming years. The more we work with the MX team, the more impressed we are with their steadfast commitment to drive a truly amazing product experience. We’re excited to bring our resources to bear as they drive towards transforming the way we leverage financial data.