Atlantic Central is a trade association that supports 49 credit unions with 133 locations across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. The organization manages the system’s liquidity reserve requirements and provides marketing and support services to its members.
“The gap analysis provided us with clear insights into the opportunities for market penetration for our credit unions across the region. It has helped us prioritize areas of focus both regionally and at an individual credit union level.”
Atlantic Central wanted to provide its members with local market insights to help them size their markets and identify opportunities. However, a broad market solution wouldn’t suffice, as they serve almost 50 credit unions of varying sizes and each has its own unique challenges. The organization needed a system that could analyze each distinct market. Their goal was to help its member credit unions identify potential areas for product and membership growth and support them with joint marketing efforts.
To get a detailed overview of the market, Atlantic Central needed to anonymize and aggregate the data from its membership. To complete the picture, the member data was integrated with WealthScapes, a comprehensive database that tracks the assets, liabilities and income of Canadians, to establish a single analytical file representing the credit union marketplace in Atlantic Canada. Product definitions from each credit union were aligned to match the definitions in WealthScapes, so that it could be used as a benchmark for the credit unions and the broader market.
By analyzing the new analytical file, our insights team helped Atlantic Central conduct a gap analysis to identify opportunities for its members. By comparing current member performance by product with market values provided through WealthScapes, we were able to determine how each credit union was performing next to their competitors. The analysis showed where each credit union in Atlantic Canada excelled and where they could improve from a product perspective.
Sets of easy-to-use tools were developed to highlight the untapped potential, as well as up-sell or cross-sell opportunities across the credit unions and within each region. These tools included interactive dashboards and summary findings that provided clear strategic direction on whether to focus on acquisition, engagement and retention, or whether it needed to adopt a new approach to get better results.
The clarity and detail of the insights are helping Atlantic Central members find opportunities, inform their regional marketing plans and identify which products to focus on by region. The success of the analysis has led Atlantic Central to take the next step on its analytics journey. The organization is looking to pair the gap analysis on products and market potential with a richer understanding of the demographics, behaviors and attitudes of its members through a segmentation study. This will help inform their marketing communications and messaging to better resonate with their membership base.
