Interesting statement but given I have worked in credit risk including being on Industry Working Groups looking at implementation of Comprehensive Credit Reporting, where there has been quite a bit of sharing of practices a bit strange I have not heard of this!
Not to mention that given I have just worked on a Privacy Act project this would appear to breach that act.
I was at a BI Conference last week and this was mentioned by one of the speakers and again as I posted he just said "were starting to use" which can of course mean many things including just assessing what can be done. However to be precise he did not say Australian banks, but just banks and as he was from a global company he may not have meant Australian Banks.
My key point however is that vast amounts of data now exist on all of us, and that more sophisticated tools are now meaning that companies can more and more data mine it in all sorts of ways, and also that the pace of change and capability in what can be done is accelerating. That data can be from many disparate sources, and the new tools have the capability of tying together what can seem unrelated.
Data collected today, and data collected years ago, will be able to be used in more powerful ways as time goes on. A bit like in DNA testing where samples from the past can now be used to identify people.
In terms of this thread looking for churners would be a fairly simple exercise in future for banks. Assessing the success of a campaign may be based on many indicators. One such could be how the cards are used, how long retained etc. Assessing this is now much easier than it used to be. Whether the marketers choose to look, and act, is of course a different question.
I have noted that the ANZ Promo Mark 2 has for example already changed from bonus points per new account to, per person. They have also moved to awarding points after the full 4 months rather than quickly. Whether that was just an error on their part (the more likely scenario I would speculate) or noticing that they were get cancellations straight afterwards I do not know.
As for the privacy act many people willingly opt in to things every day without reading the fine print, and many are unaware of the permissions they are giving and the information that they are leaking. This often includes permission for third parties to use the data.
ie Enter competitions where they nominate friends. Sign up to say Zoom Info (which then raids your entire address book for details of your contacts).
I did not mention Social Media, but a lawyer at my work (who is a bit of a privacy nut) refuses to use Facebook due to the concerns on privacy, and the permissions you give to use it.
