WealthEngine Introduces New Ratings & Scores to Financial Services Firms for Successful Customer and Prospect Identification

BETHESDA, Md., April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- WealthEngine, Inc.™, the leading provider of sophisticated wealth intelligence and analytics announced today the release of new and enhanced ratings and scores for effective wealth intelligence.   The expanded offering includes powerful new Wealth Insight Scores and Wealth Attribute Ratings to help financial services firms and others that target affluent and high net worth individuals and families to segment their customers and prospects into manageable pools based on their wealth and influence in the community.

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"In today's competitive market, financial advisors, banks and insurance brokers need to be in a position to win and retain their business. WealthEngine helps them do that by providing a complete, up-to-date wealth picture of both the clients that are currently driving their business, and the prospects that have the potential to become their best future clients, " explains James Dean, Senior Vice President of Financial and Luxury Services at WealthEngine. "It's those firms that are leveraging effective wealth identification and customer database segmentation tools to segment and prioritize their business development efforts that are winning, retaining and upselling their best customers."

"WealthEngine's ratings and scores give us the analytics to expand our reach in key geographic markets while maximizing our return on our marketing dollars," said Michael Hausknost, Senior Vice President of Sales for Private Banking at City National Bank, a provider of banking, investment, and trust services with locations in California, Nevada and New York City.  "With WealthEngine, we can quickly and more accurately identify future clients of City National Bank."

WealthEngine's robust wealth ratings and scores provide actionable insight  to reach new market segments, target new customers with the right product offerings, and retain/upsell current customers. These new ratings and scores go a step further to rank order customers and prospects for greater reliability and more effective targeting. Firms can maximize sales opportunities by identifying and prioritizing those customers and prospects that are most likely to offer a profitable business relationship based upon their wealth, assets, lifestyle, interests, psychographics, business, family, and other important attributes.

Included in the suite of ratings and scores are new and improved Wealth Insight Scores for net worth and liquidity (investable assets), total assets as well as identifying accredited investors. Wealth Elements that complement the ratings and scores include details on an individual's household income, real estate, stock holdings and pension. Our Wealth Attributes take analysis one step further by indicating those individuals who have an interest in personal , stock & bond and real estate investments. These scores were developed and validated using actual, individual-level data and advanced statistical techniques, resulting in the most accurate and powerful scores available in the marketplace today. This approach is unique in that most wealth ratings are based on aggregated, Zip +4 levels. "Using individual-level data to develop the scores prevents one household with a multi-million dollar income from skewing the average incomes of other households in the tract, and avoids classifying renters as homeowners and subsequently inflating actual assets," explains Benjamin Post, Director of Analytics at WealthEngine. "It also allows for age to be included as a factor and to account for the reality that asset behavior varies dramatically by age."

WealthEngine's scores were created from over 50 different algorithms that take into account the amount of data available in the match as well as what source the data originated from.  The scoring algorithms have been validated against 'truth' files that statistically represent the U.S. population, further establishing their accuracy in predicting a valid score.  As Mr. Post explains "Our validation process indicated that our scores are statistically valid at 95%, to within one range above or below.  In other words, in over 9 out of 10 cases, our score values will be accurate to within one range higher or lower than the score range we provided. This means that the scores can direct clients, with unmatched reliability, to their best customers, time and again." 

On Thursday, April 26 at 2:00pm Eastern, Benjamin Post and James Dean of WealthEngine will host a complimentary half-hour webinar to discuss the application of WealthEngine's ratings and scores for effective wealth identification. Registration for the 2:00pm webinar is available here. For more information on WealthEngine's ratings and scores, please visit www.wealthengine.com or contact WealthEngine at [email protected].

About WealthEngine, Inc.™

WealthEngine, Inc.™ is a leading provider of sophisticated wealth identification and prospect research services to firms that offer financial services, luxury, and philanthropic organizations and other companies that target high net worth individuals. More than 3,500 clients use WealthEngine for comprehensive research and analytics on individuals, companies and foundations. Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, WealthEngine serves both the United States and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.wealthengine.com.

SOURCE WealthEngine, Inc.