Our services
PORTFOLIO PROFITABILITY
Our clients know that managing a portfolio of payment accounts “on the average” is significantly sub-optimal, and that segmentation is key - ideally down to “the segment of one”. Our “Slice & Dice” analytical technique for handling large transactional databases has been proven over many years to identify key profit improvement opportunities - different people have different payment behaviours, which result in different profit outcomes. Our analyses have been used to the benefit of:
- Credit/debit portfolio profitability
- Acquirer portfolio profitability
- Customer segmentation analysis
- Card loyalty analysis
- EFT/ATM cost studies
LOYALTY
Credit cards and loyalty programmes have become steadily more intertwined since the mid-1990’s, and the team at The Initiatives Group has been heavily involved in many of the prominent Australian loyalty schemes. Our clients have included airlines, merchants, card issuers and programme operators, with projects in:
- Strategies for growth (membership, activity volume, engagement)
- Member behaviour and segmentation studies
- Economic analysis and pricing
- Credit card issuer strategies
- Programme design and structure - differentiation
- Cost reduction
NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
New product development could be a new format of credit card or a completely new way to pay or a new country market for your company. The Initiatives Group team brings both insights and experience and has been involved in the successful development and deployment of new product projects across a wide spectrum including:
- New market entry strategies
- Market opportunity assessment
- Debit, credit and smartcards
- Mobile/wireless payment
- B2B payments integration
RISK MANAGEMENT
The risks in payments seem to be forever increasing in both variety and complexity, and those intent on fraud, be it cyber or physical in form, continue to grow in the sophistication of their approaches. Indeed, the easier you make it for customers to pay, potentially the easier it is for fraudsters to succeed, so robust mitigation is needed. Similarly, credit providers want to be both faster and more assiduous in their decisioning, which are often conflicting objectives. Our activities in risk have included:
- Risk management strategies
- Mitigating forward dated risk
- Credit and fraud risk strategies
- Fraud prevention and detection
- Authentication strategies
- Benchmarking and best practice
PROCESS IMPROVEMENT
Speed and efficiency are watchwords of the era, hence improving processes to reduce time and cost has become a key thrust inside Financial Institutions. The Initiatives Group has been involved in bringing “cut-through” and solving challenges in many assignments focussed on these issues, including:
- Payment dispute solutions
- Back office process improvement
- Third-party processor evaluation
- Regulatory & Scheme compliance
STRATEGY
Bringing multiple workstreams together requires experience in the development of an overall business strategy, be that across all payments streams or just one particular product. The Initiatives Group has developed payments strategies and functionality roadmaps for banks and for merchants, and has undertaken numerous market entry / market assessments across Asia-Pacific. Our work has included:
- Which markets? Which segments? Which products?
- Which payment methods through which channels?
- E-commerce payment strategies
- Credit and debit card strategies
- Merchant acquirer strategies
- Retail/wholesale strategies
- B2B payment strategies