Breaking Through the ‘We Can Build That Ourselves’ Mentality: The Real Value of Risk Analytics in Financial Services

“We can build that ourselves.”

If you’ve ever tried selling risk analytics to banks or insurance companies, this phrase probably haunts your dreams.

It’s the financial world’s equivalent of: “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Let’s face it: banks and insurers are teeming with brilliant quants who believe they can do it all.

And, to be fair, they often can.

So, how do risk analytics vendors break through?

Unless you’ve got a genuine secret weapon – or your potential customers’ data science team is drowning in backlog – you’re facing an uphill battle.

Proprietary data that’s difficult to replicate can help. It’s one reason why the credit bureaus are enduringly valuable.

But that cutting-edge modeling technique that your firm is so proud of?

It might win you a deal today, but it probably won’t keep you in business tomorrow.

Even if your approach is genuinely innovative (a big if), financial institutions can often replicate it.

And even if they can’t, regulatory demands make it challenging to protect your intellectual property. Today’s compliance landscape requires bank staff to deeply understand any models they use, whether in-house or provided by a vendor. The transparency and documentation demands make safeguarding proprietary techniques nearly impossible.

So what’s the key to success?

As Tony Hughes, Ph.D. astutely points out, the real value isn’t in your models—it’s in your cross-market intelligence.

When your solution serves multiple institutions, you gain priceless insights into shared pitfalls and emerging trends that no single bank or insurer can match. You become a repository of industrywide knowledge, offering a bird’s eye view that even the most skilled in-house teams can’t replicate.

Selling risk analytics to banks, says Tony, isn’t about outsmarting them. It’s about complementing their intelligence with unique data and unparalleled market insights.

In other words: You’re not just selling a product; you’re offering a window into an entire ecosystem.

So the next time you hear, “We can build that ourselves,” remember: they might be able to build the model, but they may still need the industry-wide perspective you bring. That’s your true differentiator in the competitive world of risk analytics.