How can local authorities unlock the power of consumer data? Lloyds Bank Market Intelligence, a tool that provides aggregated and anonymised spending data to offer insight into consumer behaviour, could help.
Local authorities today face mounting financial pressures, growing community needs, and the challenge of making every pound count. Access to timely, reliable data could be a helpful input to support decision making.
By drawing on insights from millions of everyday transactions, Lloyds Bank Market Intelligence (LBMI) is a tool that provides aggregated and anonymised spending data to offer insight into consumer behaviour. This could help councils understand local economic activity, spot emerging trends, and identify where support on investment could have the greatest impact.
Adam Suchley, data product lead at Lloyds, explains how tools such as LBMI could help local authorities unlock the power of consumer data.
What is Lloyds Bank Market Intelligence (LBMI), and how could local authorities harness the power of market intelligence?
Adam Suchley: “LBMI is a tool that draws on over eight billion transactions a year across Lloyds Banking Group’s 28 million retail customer base. The data is then anonymised and aggregated, and broken down by geography and demographics such as age, gender, and income, giving a unique view into consumer needs, priorities, and shifts in behaviour.
“For local authorities, this could offer a way to better understand patterns in local economic activity, such as where people are spending, what types of businesses are seeing growth, or how behaviours are shifting over time.
“For example, it could be used as an input into strategies to revitalise high streets with empty units. Where a town centre is struggling to attract consumers, we could provide insight into the brands that residents are buying online, and the retailers and services they are travelling outside of their area to visit.
“The authority could then use that evidence to target those merchants that could occupy those empty units and bring shoppers back to the area, boosting productivity and helping make the town centre a better place to both live and visit.”
How does LBMI generate insights?
“The tool is able to capture 1 in 4 card transactions in the UK, giving us a granular view and detailed analysis of consumer behaviour through anonymised and aggregated data insights.
“The data can also be broken down further by demographics like gender, age, and income, to understand whether an area is under or over indexing for particular groups. This could help reveal how attractive an area is in terms of its ability to generate consumer spending, and track how that changes over time.”
Could LBMI provide insight into economic change?
“Because we have been collecting data for many years, we can look at how both consumer behaviour and spending patterns have changed over time, helping us measure the impact of macroeconomic factors, and extract insight to help inform business strategy.
“Access to this data might help authorities understand the impact of economic shifts and evaluate the effect of local initiatives.
“It could also be used to compare areas, benchmark their performance or help identify where they can focus further investigation.”
Are there any potential barriers to adoption?
“Some authorities may be less familiar with using external sources of data and incorporating that into their working practices, but as users begin to explore the insights it offers, we find that their initial reservations gradually ease, helping them see how it could support their work.
“We have a simple, intuitive report that any end user can navigate. For more technically minded users, they can access the associated data and combine it with other sources to do their own analysis.
“So, you can make it as simple or complicated as you want.”
Final thoughts?
“LBMI could be a useful input into evidence-based decision making. By offering a different view of how people are spending and behaving, it may help local authorities make the best use of their resources to support more prosperous communities for people to live and work.”
For more information visit https://www.lloydsbank.com/business/corporate-banking/market-intelligence.html or contact us at [email protected]
Lloyds and Lloyds Bank are trading names of Lloyds Bank plc. Registered Office: 25 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7HN. Registered in England and Wales no. 2065. Telephone: 0207 626 1500.
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