A recent Financial Times article discussed how Admiral, a UK-based insurance company, was planning to leverage Facebook data to offer policy discounts.
“The way you write and the things you post online are shaped by your personality,” an Admiral employee said. “An overconfident person will use phrases such as ‘always,’ ‘never,’ and exclamation marks rather than ‘maybe,’ ‘perhaps,’ and ‘let me think about it’. An overconfident person might be a risky driver.”
However, at the very last minute, Facebook pulled the plug on Admiral’s application, which was capable of sifting through the social network’s posts to help predict how safe drivers would be. Instead, consumers will now simply be able to log into the insurance company’s application using their Facebook credentials.
According to Finextra, Facebook said, “We have made sure anyone using this app is protected by our guidelines and that no Facebook user data is used to assess their eligibility. Facebook accounts will only be used for login and verification purposes.”
While Admiral will leverage Facebook in a different manner than it had originally hoped for, the creative use of big data is what all financial services companies should be exploring, in order to win new business and retain existing customers.
