Google Maps Platform: the best partner for financial service companies

Digitisation has revolutionised how business is done in the financial sector. Entities in this sector must serve clients whose demands are increasingly based around immediacy, personalisation and security. And it does not stop there: the client will not hesitate to change their financial provider if the experience they receive does not conform to these premises or if they are not convinced it is worth what they are paying.

In this new environment, financial services companies have to be creative in order to deliver a customer experience that responds successfully to this context. One of the best ways of achieving this is by integrating geolocation software in your business processes. This is a fast-track to improving efficiency, security and operations with customers.

The Google Maps Platform geolocation solution offers APIs and functionalities that make it easy for financial companies to develop or integrate geolocation solutions into their business processes. In a recent article on the official Google Cloud blog, Google Maps managers offer industry-specific advice about how to take advantage of geolocation in the creation and use of:

• Enhanced transactions
• Quick and verified user registration
• Branch and ATM locator
• Generation of contextual experiences
• Fraud detection

Clearer financial statements with the enriched transaction solution

When users view their statements, they are currently faced with a gibberish of cryptic abbreviations, instead of names or descriptions that can be understood first time. The Google Maps Platform has worked to help financial service providers generate statements that are much easier to understand.

A compelling reason: according to the Boston Consulting Group’s “Global BCG Survey on Geospatial Data for Enterprises (n = 520)”, understandable statements increase consumer confidence – with increases in the NPS of 15% or more – and reduce costly support calls by 67%.

To assist this clarity of understanding, the Google geolocation environment adds an enhanced transaction solution, which allows each transaction to be identified with the following data:

• Company name
• Market category
• Photo of shop window
• Location on a map
• Contact information

Additionally, you can help customers easily view transactions by adding the merchant’s name to the cost and date of the transaction, and displaying transactions on a Google map. It provides a very graphic way to show customers where and how they are spending their money.

Faster registration with a quick and verified sign-up solution

Entering customer addresses by hand can quickly lead to a significant reduction in conversions, errors in critical customer data, or even increased delivery costs due to inaccurate information.

To solve this, Google Maps Platform provides a quick and verified sign-up solution. Customer registration processes are accelerated, and nearby addresses are suggested with just a few clicks or screen taps, dramatically reducing registration time (up to 64%) and increasing conversion rates by up to 15%.

The Google Maps Platform solution also includes advanced address verification, which reduces the risk of fraudulent accounts to a minimum. Drawing on geospatial data, this advanced verification of addresses makes it far more difficult to create these types of accounts which are so damaging for financial institutions, with a reduction in their volume of up to 30%.

Location and detailed information of branches and ATMs

The decision to trust a financial institution is not taken lightly by your potential clients. According to data managed by Google, close to 75% of these clients investigate the entity before visiting it. This makes it even more necessary for the financial institution in question to ensures that detailed information on the location of each of its offices, branches and even ATMs (if applicable) is easily available.

The Google Maps Platform offers a tool called Locator Plus, which is easily integrated into the websites and apps of these financial institutions. This tool provides the same information about your offices, branches or ATMs that is shown on Google Maps, such as:

• Opening hours
• Services provided
• Customer Reviews
• Photographs of the location
• Access routes via different means of transport
• Etc.

Using this geolocation information is extremely beneficial for financial institutions, as the aforementioned study by Boston Consulting Group highlights. Companies that have opted in to this functionality register a 14% increase in the NPS (Net Promoter Score) and a 7% decrease in customer service calls.

Identification of suspicious transactions with fraud detection

Google Maps Platform can also be used for fast and accurate fraud detection. An example: financial institutions can use the location of the customer’s mobile device to flag suspicious activity, such as a withdrawal of funds at an ATM in a different location from that of the customer’s phone.

The Google Maps Platform APIs also allow you to identify suspicious transaction patterns, such as customer purchases in places that are a long way from the user’s previous transactions.

The benefits of using the information that the Google Maps Platform geolocation service makes so readily available are very striking, particularly when it comes to verifying identities and detecting fraud: according to the Boston Consulting Group report, entities that use geospatial data for this purpose reduce fraudulent transactions by 70% and false positives by 45%

Intelligence Partner is a Google Premier Partner. We have gained Google Cloud’s prestigious Specialisation in Location-Based Services, testament to our in-depth knowledge of the Google Maps Platform and extensive experience in projects based on this geolocation suite for companies from all sectors.

We can fully adapt it to the needs of your financial services company. All we need is for you to tell us about your financial services company and your goals for the future, making the most of the enormous range of possibilities that Google Maps Platform offers you.

Our expert technical and business consultants will analyse the information you provide and propose the ideal way to meet your objectives, employing the Google geolocation environment. We will advise you on how to improve customer experience, reduce risk and increase efficiency in all your financial services.

Shall we get started?