A recent study by Meridien Research, Needham, MA, a provider of analytical research services for financial technology users and providers, estimated that the top 500 global financial services firms spent $360 million in 1997 on systems that use data mining technologies.
The report, “Data Mining Solutions and Customer Management,” also indicated that commercial banks are the biggest single users of data mining, followed by nonbank consumer credit companies and insurance firms.
North America accounts for 54 percent of this spending, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. All three regions are expected to increase spending by an average of 20 percent per year through 2002.
The study examined the strength and weaknesses of data mining tools for customer management tasks, such as cross-selling, customer profiling and retention.
