Transformation · Banking

What a rural deposit branch can still win once competitors take their share.

Published deposit data stops at the district. The rural arm of a private bank needed deposit potential for the area each branch serves, with the share competitors already hold taken out.

Private bank, rural arm

CASA and term deposits

Tier 3 to 6 markets

Rural deposit potential at hexagon resolution

What the model achieved

Back-tested against the bank's own deposit data in a single-district pilot before scale-up.

90%

Validated

Model accuracy against actual deposits for the top three deciles.

Scope

Micro-market classifications, one applied to every hexagon.

100+

Scope

Signals carried per 500m hexagon.

7k to 11k

Scope

Hexagons per district. One village is five to ten of them.

The case

01 · Two channels, one blind spot

Nobody could rank a micro-market

Internal officers and external banking correspondents both worked from branch-level targets with no view below the branch.

02 · District data is too coarse

Regulatory data stops at the district

Two branches in the same district look identical in the published deposit figures, whatever their actual share.

03 · The real question

Acquisition is a balance transfer game

Almost every household already holds an account. Finding the unbanked is the wrong question in these markets.

The question changed from who is unbanked to where the deposit sits

Rural deposit growth is won by moving balances that already exist. That reframing set the model: estimate the deposit pool inside every hexagon, then subtract what competitors already hold.

District

regulatory deposit total

Published savings, current and term deposit balances set the total addressable pool.

→

Hexagon

estimated potential

The district total is decomposed across every cell using population, vibrance and business signals.

→

Net of

competitor absorption

Rival branches are modelled as gravity wells, weighted by trust tier and branch age.

→

Ranked

shortlist per branch

What reaches a field officer is three to five hexagons for the week, with a segment target attached.

What was scored

Public and licensed signals, anchored to published district deposit totals.

Anchored deposit estimation

Regulatory district deposit balances split into savings, current and term components.

Keeps every hexagon estimate tied to a published total instead of a free-floating model.

Competitor trust tiers

Banks, cooperative banks, small finance banks, payments banks and post offices, each weighted by tier and branch age.

A large public sector branch absorbs far more local deposit than a payments bank outlet on the same street.

Business ecosystem

Business registry entries and 125 point-of-interest categories, weighted by local wealth.

Current account and term deposit potential tracks commercial density more closely than headcount.

Catchment geometry

Branch catchment overlap, leakage past a nearer competitor, and natural boundaries.

Separates genuine white space from deposit the branch is already losing to a closer rival.

Every hexagon lands in one of six classes

The class sets the instruction. A branch team reads the colour and knows the play.

Classification

What it means

Action

Primary Expansion

High potential, low competitor absorption. Blue ocean.

Build presence first

Growth Market

Rising potential with room still open.

Increase field frequency

Competitive

Real potential, entrenched rivals.

Compete on balance transfer

Core Stronghold

Existing share concentrated here.

Defend and deepen

Digital Service Zone

Potential too thin to justify physical servicing.

Serve digitally, avoid field cost

Saturated Dead Zone

Absorbed by competitors, no realistic headroom.

Exclude from field plans

What each team received

One output per role. No new system, no mapping skills required.

Leadership

Review briefs by cluster

Pre-packaged branch, area and regional briefs surfacing neglected blue ocean zones and over-invested battlegrounds, so reviews start from the gap instead of the outcome.

Branch and area

Catchment and leakage map

Where the branch is losing deposit to a nearer competitor, where its stronghold actually ends, and which adjacent pockets are unclaimed.

Field

Three to five hexagons a week

Action cards carrying coordinates, the segment to target and a visit priority, available in regional language and forwardable into the field app already in use.

How the workflow changed

Before

Targets set at branch level with no view below it

Field officers chose their own villages by familiarity

Competitor pressure understood anecdotally

Reviews tracked outcomes and debated the reasons

External partner channels worked without shared priorities

→

After

Every hexagon carries an estimated deposit pool and a class

Weekly hexagon assignments reach officers as action cards

Competitor absorption is modelled and netted off

Reviews open on the gap between coverage and potential

Internal and partner channels work the same ranked list

How the engagement is measured

Three gates, each agreed with the bank before modelling began.

Gate

Model accuracy against field ground truth.

60 to 70%

Checked by

Joint audits comparing high and low potential hexagons against what teams find on the ground.

Gate

Catchment utilisation against a captured baseline.

Improvement

Checked by

Branch-level utilisation measured before recommendations were issued, then re-measured.

Gate

Deposits per visit in recommended zones against organic zones.

Differential

Checked by

Visit compliance logged against the hexagons the model prioritised.

We get data at a district level, and no one knows how to deeply look inside it. Branches have been made historically and leadership needs an objective view to make sure the goals and staffing are done correctly.

Bank Leadership

During scoping

Start with one district.

Share branch locations and three months of deposit performance. We will estimate the pool hexagon by hexagon and you can check the top decile against what your teams already know.

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