Wells Fargo Utilizing Data Analytics

Wells Fargo is making large investments in not only analytics but also talent to support the growth.  I found this article interesting because it outlines a variety of their focus areas and one of the primary topics that jumped out at me was personalization.  They have large amounts of sensitive financial records in addition to a variety of data from their other business lines.  With Wells Fargo having a long history of scandals, their focus on personalizing the banking experience to individual customers worries me a bit, specifically around data protection.  “Data security and privacy are two of the biggest hurdles that must be faced if the benefits of big data are to be truly realized” (Covington 2016, 32).  Their reason for the focus on personalization is to drive revenue generation, which makes sense from a business perspective, but could lead to more scandalous actions if that data is breached or used unethically.

Although there are potential consequences that worry me, the work they are doing does sound interesting and exciting to be a part of for the analysts working for them.  For the past three years they have been working to collect, organize, and analyze data from not just financial banking transactions but all their different business lines including market intelligence and risk.  The connections they have globally does present amazing opportunities to find connections and create new ways of generating revenue.  They are not only investing in getting their data into usable formats for AI and machine learning to find connections, but they are also investing heavily in attracting and retaining talented data scientists.  I think the executives running Wells Fargo’s analytic solutions are taking the correct approach, I just hope the directives they are given from the business teams in how they are using the data is strongly tied to data protection and security moving forward.

Author: Logan Callen

References

Choudhury, Moumita Deb. 2020. “Why Data And Analytics Is So Significant For Wells Fargo.” Express Computer, January 06, 2020. https://www.expresscomputer.in/news/why-data-and-analytics-is-so-significant-for-wells-fargo/44940/

Covington, Daniel. 2016. Analytics: Data Science, Data Analysis and Predictive Analytics for Business. 5th Edition. South Carolina: CreateSpace.