Limelight Insights keeps financial clients in step with a rapidly changing industry landscape, helping them evaluate options and opportunities to make sound decisions and grow profitably. Over the years, we’ve watched major consolidations and mergers take place. We’ve conducted studies to quantify investor mistrust in the midst of a scandal, and provided intelligence to banks as they began offering investment products and services to their customers. We helped our clients successfully move into the era of consumer online banking by evaluating financial websites, monitoring the growth of business, and consumer adoption and barriers to acceptance. Today, we ensure that consumers’ online banking needs are being met, security issues are explored and that there are protocols in place for these to be properly addressed, and evaluate the insurance needs of consumers as they navigate through life.
Financial & Insurance
Limelight Insights has extensive experience conducting market research for virtually every sector of financial and insurance services including:
- Current and prospective customers
- Special interest consumers
- National opinion leaders/industry analysts
- Small business/commercial current and target customers
- Business/financial decision-makers
- Government regulators/policy makers
- General consumers
- Financial services professionals
- Influencers (e.g., lenders, brokers, financial planners, etc.)
Limelight Insights offers full service design, analysis and consulting to financial services clients across a multitude of research categories including:
- Concept testing for financial products and services, including various types of insurance
- Consumer attitudes toward and impressions of the banking industry overall
- General consumer attitude and usage studies for specific products and companies
- Positioning and image studies for financial products
- Evaluation of communications and advertising campaigns
- Target audience segmentation studies
- Electronic banking services testing and tracking
- Corporate image assessment
- New product development studies
- Underrepresented/minority segment (women, Black/African Americans, etc.) investor expectations of investment/banking services
Case Study: Credit Card Reward Program Usage Assessment
A major national consumer and commercial bank contracted with Limelight Insights in order to:
- Understand the barriers to consumers’ activation and use of the bank’s quarterly promotion categories
- Develop tactical strategies to engage target groups with the program and build card use
- Develop customer profiles that provide insight into the types of card users the bank is and should be targeting
A series of in-depth interviews were conducted with customers of this bank who use their credit card often and value a credit card’s rewards program to discuss general credit card attitudes and usage, their understanding of the rewards program, the drivers that would encourage them to use the rewards program more often, and the best methods of communicating about the rewards program and its benefits.
The results of this research were used to help the bank clarify credit card and rewards program usage patterns, identify key targets of individuals most likely to engage with the rewards program, and for giving direction to future marketing, research and creative marketing communication materials.
A large part of our business is answering critical questions
and providing actionable insights that can inform a business’ or organization’s direction.
Here are some of the questions Limelight Insights has helped financial clients answer:
Are we meeting the needs and expectations of our current customers?
Limelight Insights recommends a systematic feedback program that invites customers who have recently visited your institution or interacted with an associate to rate and comment on their experience. We custom design evaluation forms using qualitative input to ensure coverage of all the key issues. The evaluations are distributed directly following the interaction and are easy to complete, ensuring accurate recall and high participation rates.
We have structured customer evaluation studies to serve businesses with branch, regional, or national offices providing the capability to delineate variations in satisfaction by location. Trends are identified and comparative analysis is performed. Stellar locations can be used as models and problem locations targeted for improvement.
How can we effectively position our bank to build market share without drastically reducing service fees and charges?
Financial institutions often run sales promotions touting free services to attract new customers, only to raise rates after the introductory period, which results in account closures. Through image studies, Limelight Insights will help your financial institution effectively position itself to retain current customers, while attracting new customers through promotion of non-fee-based differentiators such as trust, convenience, and personal attention.
With a thorough understanding of how your company’s strengths are perceived, and associated advantages relative to the competition, our financial services clients have been able to implement effective image campaigns that build loyalty among current customers, while attracting prospective customers on attributes beyond price.
Is my online banking system user friendly?
Limelight Insights has conducted many research studies to evaluate the effectiveness and intuitiveness of online banking services. These studies have included conducting website usability testing for financial services software manufacturers, as well as for financial institutions. Our process includes in-depth interviews with key users. These enable us to better understand usage patterns and behaviors, the sources your customers/prospective customers use to access your services, and how they navigate your sites/apps, with a focus on labels, navigation tools, perceived content value, and level of security. Results of studies in this space have helped financial institutions attract online customers and improve their online capabilities.
Will current customers be interested in this new bundled package of banking, insurance, or investment services and will it help to attract new customers?
Limelight Insights is known for its expertise in new product development research. We have conducted numerous studies to assess consumer reactions to proposed bundled packages of banking services. With a thorough understanding of current and prospective customers’ product needs and expectations, our financial services clients have been able to successfully launch bundled packages of banking services that are competitively priced.
Some projective techniques we use to assess reactions to a bundle of banking services include needs laddering, brainstorming exercises and wishful thinking. Quantitative evaluations include conjoint analysis to look at various relationships, including value and synergy. Once a client decides that demand may be worth the investment, we have assisted in the testing of concepts and, finally, after the rollout, we have provided evaluation through in-branch testing.