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SMU Classification: Restricted
SMU251
YOB BANK: APPLICATION OF TEXT ANALYTICS IN A RETAIL

BANK
It was April 2014, and Cadence Chong, a new analyst at YOB Bank Singapore’s consumer banking
department, was preoccupied over her first assignment. Chong had been hired to improve the
bank’s credit card business, as her manager believed that there was scope for the business to do
better. A specific initiative that had been suggested was to enhance the banks’ responsiveness to
customer feedback on MyDiningDeals, a mobile application that offered special deals and
promotions contingent upon a customer using their YOB credit card.
Chong was therefore tasked to apply analytical techniques to user-generated data gathered by the
application, as well as customer and internal feedback, on the division’s credit card offerings. In
addition, she needed to investigate how the application could be made more user-friendly. Chong
was eager to prove her value to the firm. She knew that if successful, her analyses and
recommendations would help drive profitability in the credit card division.
YOB Bank
Established in Hong Kong in 1865, YOB Bank had grown to become a leading global bank with a
business presence in more than 150 countries. Its suite of financial services spanned consumer
banking and credit, wealth management, transaction services, securities brokerage, and corporate
and investment banking. For the 2012 financial year, the group recorded a net revenue of US$70
billion (S$85 billion 1).
YOB’s consumer banking operations began in Singapore in 1982. In 2004, in a move to further
grow the business, YOB was incorporated as a local entity, YOB Singapore. Its consumer banking
business covered a range of products and services that included credit cards, deposits, loans,
insurance and investments. By the end of 2012, YOB Singapore had brought in more than US$706
million (S$864 million 2) in revenues, and US$475 million (S$582 million) in profits.
MyDiningDeals
Almost all banks provided credit cards to their customers, and thus issuing a credit card on its own
did not provide a distinct competitive advantage. Banks had to constantly look for ways to
differentiate their credit card businesses to attract more customers, and then persuade those
customers not to use a competitor’s credit card. One of the ways YOB incentivised customers was
through the MyDiningDeals application, which facilitated a customer’s search for dining deals
1
US$1 = S$1.22 on 31 Dec 2012. http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/, accessed June 2014.
2
Ibid.
This case was written by Professor Venky Shankararaman and Professor Swapna Gottipati at the Singapore Management
University. The case was prepared solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate
either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other
identifying information to protect confidentiality.
Copyright © 2016, Singapore Management University Version: 2016-01-18
This document is authorized for use only in ALESSIO SIBILLE's ATD - VIRT - XXXVIII - II at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (CENTRUM) from Nov 2020 to May 2021.
SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank
linked to their credit card (refer to Exhibit 1 for the concept solution architecture of the
MyDiningDeals application).
MyDiningDeals was used exclusively to allow customers to partake of special offers and
promotions at various restaurants in Singapore, and deals from the same restaurant could vary
depending on the type of credit card that was linked to the application. For example, YOB Gold
gave a 10% discount on a la carte dining at Everest Kitchen, whereas YOB Lady gave a 15%
discount. To better serve customers, the application provided a search engine that used keywords,
such as, ‘Chinese’ or ‘Japanese’. The Deals Matching Algorithm would then take the keyword,
match it to the credit card linked to the application, and retrieve a special dining offer appropriate
for that customer from the Deals System.
The Deals System, which stored various deals, was periodically updated by a bank executive who
entered in the latest promotions and removed offers that were no longer valid (refer to Exhibit 2 for
examples of deals given by the bank and the information entered by the bank executive to add new
deals).
However, customers had given very negative feedback on the MyDiningDeals experience. The
major complaints from the customers were related to the following:
1. The current Search was confined to keywords and was insufficient. The dining deals search
results were displayed randomly by the application, and due to many deals appearing on
the list, it was rather difficult for the customers to decide on what deal best met their
preference.
2. Customers preferred a more customised search by which the application could consider
their preferences such as, cuisine type, deal type (e.g. cash discount, 1-for-1, rewards),
group/single, location, etc. They also wanted a ranked list of deals so that the ‘best’ deals
were towards the top.
3. Most customers had multiple YOB cards, so some of these customers wanted to know the
best deals for a specific card.
The business heads at YOB Bank too had major concerns about the application after they
experienced difficulties interpreting raw data from the application to help them make informed
decisions internally. Chong’s manager in the credit cards division had met with them to develop a
wish list of some useful capabilities. They wanted to:
1. Get insights into deal transactions to find interesting patterns emerging from what deals the
customers chose, what restaurants they visited, and the credit card they used.
2. Predict popular deals among groups of customers. These groups could be formed by
customer demographics, card type, or by deal.
3. Recommend or advertise deals to customers based on what rating the customer would be
likely to give those deals.
The Task
Chong needed to carefully examine the issues with the current MyDiningDeals mobile application.
Using the different types of analytics and algorithms presented, she would have to work out what
2/10
would be the best approach to address issues identified by the customer and credit card manager. In
order to do that, Chong would have to draft the problems from both perspectives, and then outline
and explain the rationale behind the steps she would take in preparing the solution.
In addition, she had to develop a concept solution using her background knowledge and the theory
she had learnt (refer to the Appendix).
Chong would be required to make a presentation that contained the following deliverables:
1. Problems that were identified.

2. Her approach to the solution along with a rationale. How did she use the given algorithms?
And why?
3. Provide an improved Concept Solution Architecture for the MyDiningDeals mobile
application (refer to Exhibit 1).
In two weeks she would have to deliver her analyses along with actionable recommendations.
Chong was also keen to suggest a couple of areas that analytics could be applied to in the
organisation. She thought this would not only enable her to demonstrate her analytical skill, but
also her out-of-the-box thinking and pro-active approach.
3/10
EXHIBIT 1: MYDININGDEALS MOBILE APP CONCEPT SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE
Customer Deals
Deals Matching System
Algorithm Deals
DB
MyDiningDeals Bank Executive
Western
The Queen and

Mangosteen
3% cash back and
complimentary ice
cream worth $5.
Hard Rock Cafe

3% cash back and
10% Off Total Bill.
Source: Author’s own concept
EXHIBIT 2: SAMPLE DEALS FROM THE DEALS DATABASE
Restaurant Cuisine Deal Card

New Everest Asian 15% off food bill (a la carte menu) YOB Platinum
Kitchen
The Paramount Chinese S$20 return visit voucher with min spend of YOB Gold
S$100
Angie The Cakes & 3% cashback off whole cakes (20cm & YOB Gold
Choice Pastries above)
Beerthai House Asian Complimentary dessert with every meal YOB Platinum
Restaurant purchased.
The Queen and Western 3% cash back and complimentary ice cream YOB Gold
Mangosteen worth $5.
Hard Rock Cafe Western 3% cash back and 10% Off Total Bill. YOB Gold
Hard Rock Cafe Western 3% cash back and 15% Off Total Bill. YOB Platinum
Suju Japanese Japanese 1-1 free on any lunch meals. YOB Lady
Source: Author’s own data
4/10
APPENDIX
APPLICATION OF TEXT ANALYTICS IN A RETAIL BANK
INTRODUCTION
Date can be classified into two categories, structured data and unstructured data (which also
includes semi-structured data), based on their structural conformity. Structured data follow a given
structure, as defined using metadata. For example, data stored in a database is a type of structured
data. Unstructured data do not follow any specific structure, and can for instance, include data
found in emails, word processing reports, presentation slides, voice mail, audio conversations in
call centres, a blog, wiki, social media textual comments, etc. The following Figure 1 shows an
example of structured and unstructured data.
Figure 1: Structured and unstructured data
Structured Data Unstructured Data

Customer First Last Age Customer S$20 return visit voucher with
ID Name Name Value minimum spend of S$100
182827 Jack Nicholas 45 80
182828 Martin Jenkins 54 45
…
A 2007 report from Forbes stated that more than 80% of business relevant data were unstructured. 3
While it is more difficult to exploit and extract the information from unstructured data, there are a
few techniques and tools available to do so. Text analytics and machine learning algorithms must
be applied to unstructured data so that the information contained in this data is converted into
useful knowledge for decision making.
The following provides a background of analytics with some examples to aid the reader in
producing the solution. This is followed by data mining and text mining algorithms that are useful
for this case.
ANALYTICS BACKGROUND
According to a consultative report by Lisa Kart et al., “Analytics is the discipline that applies logic
and mathematics to data to provide insights for making better decisions”. 4 It includes methods
such as data mining, statistics and machine learning. As a first step, the target data is cleaned and
processed. In the second step, data is modelled/mined using principled algorithms. Finally,
analytics is applied to gain valuable insights from the results. The following sections provide a
brief description of the different types of analytics, namely descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and
prescriptive. 5
3
Robert Malone, Structuring Unstructured Data, “Forbes”, May 4, 2007, http://www.forbes.com/2007/04/04/teradata-solution-software-
biz-logistics-cx_rm_0405data.html, accessed June 2014.
4
Lisa Kart, Alexander Linden, and W. Roy Schulte, Extend Your Portfolio of Analytics Capabilities, September 2013, G00254653,
Gartner, https://www.gartner.com/doc/2594822/extend-portfolio-analytics-capabilities, accessed June 2014.
5
Ibid.
5/10
1. Descriptive Analytics
Descriptive analytics is directed at answering the question, “What happened?” by querying

historical data and summarising key performance metrics. Descriptive statistics include concepts
such as mean, median, variance, etc. The results of the analysis are generally represented by visual
summaries, and typically provide insights that are used by business executives, who apply their
judgement and experience to make decisions. Figure 2 shows an example of a visual summary of
historical deal transactions.
Figure 2: Descriptive Analytics
Deals
400k
Sales Amount
200k
k
Jan Feb Mar Apr May June Jul Aug Sep
*Note: The bar chart of deal transactions per month which shows the comparisons
2. Diagnostic Analytics
Diagnostic analytics attempts to answer the question, “Why did it happen?”, and in order to answer
this question, one has to dive deeper into the results delivered by descriptive analytics. For example,
by looking at Figure 2 and delving into the sales amount for January, one can possibly see the sales
for specific customers or products if the data is organised appropriately. This can potentially give
certain insights as to why sales were low in January. So in a way, diagnostic analytics is an
interactive form of descriptive analytics and allows the analyst a way to apply descriptive statistics,
and also analyse data through methods such as data cubes.
3. Predictive Analytics
Predictive analytics uses historical data in combination with algorithms, and occasionally with
external knowledge, to determine a probable future outcome of an entity or new data point
behaviour. 6,7 Figure 3 shows how the classifier algorithm learns to classify such data and predict a
new data point within a certain probability. 8 And a user collaborative filtering method 9 is
illustrated in Table 1, which can be used to predict an individual user’s rating on a missing deal.
6
Rado Kotorov, Enhancing Decision-Making, Cost-Efficiency, and Profitability with Predictive Analytics, Information Builders, 2009,
http://www.informationbuilders.com/about_us/whitepapers/download_form/4575, accessed June 2014.
7
Charles Nyce, Predictive Analytics White Paper, American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Insurance Institute
of America, p. 1, 2007, http://www.aicpcu.org/doc/predictivemodelingwhitepaper.pdf, accessed June 2014.
8
Chih-Wei Hsu, Chih-Chung Chang, and Lin, Chih-Jen, A Practical Guide to Support Vector Classification (Technical report),
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, 2003,
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/papers/guide/guide.pdf, accessed June 2014.
9
Xiaoyuan Su, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, A survey of collaborative filtering techniques, Advances in Artificial Intelligence, 2009,
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1730000/1722966/p4-
su.pdf?ip=202.161.57.178&id=1722966&acc=PUBLIC&key=FF6731C4D3E3CFFF%2E39D185EE56A58666%2E4D4702B0C3E38B
35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35&CFID=359209866&CFTOKEN=68608286&__acm__=1403084947_57122beca50fcfb8a8cac7e467ebcf4
c, accessed June 2014.
6/10
Figure 3: Classifier Algorithm
*Note: the classifier algorithm can predict new data point by using support vectors through a statistical approach where a
linear plane is gleaned from known data based on a binary classification. New data can be predicted by using this model.
Table 1: Collaborative Filtering
sim = 0.45
sim = 0.80
sim = 0.70
sim = -0.79
*Note: Table 1 predicts the missing rating by using the collaborative filtering mode. For example, Alice’s missing rating
can be guessed based on how close her behaviour is to User2 and the rating can therefore be estimated from the average
ratings of similar users.
Such predictive analytics are conducted by using various types of methods: statistical, probabilistic
(support vectors, collaborative filtering), neural networks, case-based reasoning, genetic algorithms,
regression, time series analysis, and decision trees.
4. Prescriptive Analytics
Prescriptive analytics not only anticipates what will happen and when it will happen, but also why
it will happen and how to make it happen. Prescriptive analytics focuses on coming up with
decision options about how to take advantage of a future opportunity or mitigate a future risk, and
shows the implication of each decision option using optimisation, simulation or other means. Such
scenarios can incorporate actions taken by a human, by partial automation with human input, or can
be fully automated.
7/10
ALGORITHMS
In this section, we describe some standard algorithms used in data or text mining. To deal with
unstructured data, text mining provides several techniques to mine useful information from text.
Below is a brief overview of two text-mining algorithms: extraction algorithm and semantic
similarity. These algorithms help in converting the unstructured text into some form of structured
text so that further processing can be done. Also described is the ranking algorithm, which will
help in ranking a set of entities or items.
1. Extraction Algorithm
The task of extracting valuable information from unstructured data is very complex. There are
several methods to extract such information. A typical rule-based method consists of two parts: a
collection of rules, and a set of policies to control when these rules are applied.10 These rules are
either manually coded or input from labelled sources.
Refer to Figure 4 for an example of rules being used to extract information from text.
Figure 4: An example for information extraction from unstructured text
The following is an example of some of the rules that can be used:
{String=“The”} {Orthography type = Capitalised word}

{Orthography type = All capitalised} {Dictionary Type =Company end}
In Figure 4, the first term is optional. The second term matches all capitalised abbreviations, and
the last term matches all capitalised words that form the last word of any entry in a dictionary of
company names. Similarly, numerical data can also be extracted by specifying the rules.
Fig 5: An example for information extraction from unstructured text. Task it to extract the net or
gross, profit or loss, amount, company and quarter from the text in a fact sheet.
Figure 5 shows an example of applying rule-based method to a text. The rules in the rule engine
incorporate terms that can extract various aspects from the text to generate the desired output. The
first term matches the amount type: net or gross. The second term matches profit or loss, the third
term matches all capitalised words that form the last word of any entry in a dictionary of company
names, the fourth matches the amount and the last term matches the quarter. Similarly, numerical
data types such as date, year, zip code, etc., can also be extracted by specifying the rules.
10
Martin Atzmueller, Peter Kluegl, and Frank Puppe , Rule-Based Information Extraction for Structured Data Acquisition using
TextMarker, Proc. LWA 2008 Knowledge Discovery and Machine Learning Track, University of Wuerzburg, 2008
8/10
2. Semantic Similarity Algorithm
Semantic measure is a metric defined over a set of documents or terms, in which the idea of
distance between them is based on the likeness of their meaning or semantic content. It is generally
measured by using ontologies. Ontology is a representation of knowledge as a hierarchy of
concepts within a domain. The similarity is a number between -1 to +1. For example, words such as
car and automobile are more similar than car and orange. The lexical database, Wordnet, contains
estimates of word similarity and can be used to support text analysis and other artificial intelligence
applications. 11 Refer to Figure 5 for a semantic graph that illustrates the ontological relationship
between car and orange.
Figure 5: Semantic Graph for Orange and Car 12
3. Ranking Algorithm
The linear combination method is a mathematical expression constructed from a set of variables,
obtained by multiplying each variable by a constant and adding the results (ax + by), where ‘a’ and
‘b’ are constants (e.g. weights); and ‘x’ and ‘y’ are the values of the variables. 13 The resulting
output can then be interpreted as a score that can be used to rank information.
This score is calculated by applying a linear combination method as shown in Table 3, for example,
to rank monthly sales at different outlets of XYZ Corporation.
Table 3: A Scoring Example using Linear Combination Method
Outlet Clothing –v1 Gas – v2 Groceries – v3

(constant) (0.1) (0.3) (0.5) Score
O1 100K 50K 10K 30000
O2 120K 80K 13K 42500
11
Giannis Varelas, Epimenidis Voutsakis, Paraskevi Raftopoulou, Euripides G.M. Petrakis, and Evangelos E. Milios, Semantic
similarity methods in wordNet and their application to information retrieval on the web, 2005, PIKE, http://nike.psu.edu/widm05/p/p10-
varelas.pdf, accessed June 2014.
12
Visuwords online, http://www.visuwords.com/, accessed June 2014.
13
Lars Eldén, Numerical linear algebra in data mining. Acta Numerica, 15, pp 327-384, “Cambridge University Press”, May 2006,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=439266, accessed June 2014.
9/10
O3 0K 10K 8K 7000
*Note that the scoring function is 0.1v1 + 0.3v2 + 0.5 v3. The ranking order for the outlets is O2, O1 and O3.
10/10

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SMU Classification: Restricted

YOB BANK: APPLICATION OF TEXT ANALYTICS IN A RETAIL

Copyright © 2016, Singapore Management University Version: 2016-01-18

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

1. Problems that were identified.

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

EXHIBIT 1: MYDININGDEALS MOBILE APP CONCEPT SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE

The Queen and

Hard Rock Cafe

Source: Author’s own concept

EXHIBIT 2: SAMPLE DEALS FROM THE DEALS DATABASE

Restaurant Cuisine Deal Card

Source: Author’s own data

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

APPLICATION OF TEXT ANALYTICS IN A RETAIL BANK

Figure 1: Structured and unstructured data

Structured Data Unstructured Data

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

Descriptive analytics is directed at answering the question, “What happened?” by querying

Figure 2: Descriptive Analytics

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

Figure 3: Classifier Algorithm

Table 1: Collaborative Filtering

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

Figure 4: An example for information extraction from unstructured text

The following is an example of some of the rules that can be used:

{String=“The”} {Orthography type = Capitalised word}

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

2. Semantic Similarity Algorithm

Figure 5: Semantic Graph for Orange and Car 12

Table 3: A Scoring Example using Linear Combination Method

Outlet Clothing –v1 Gas – v2 Groceries – v3

SMU-16-0007 YOB Bank: Application Of Text Analytics In A Retail Bank

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