SAS, the leader in business intelligence, today announced that CAPITAL Card Services Inc., a leading service provider of MasterCard and Visa accounts for financial and non-financial institutions, has chosen SAS Enterprise Miner to help maximize profitability and minimize risk for its customers. SAS Enterprise Miner is a rich suite of integrated data mining algorithms designed to extract business knowledge from vast data stores and then create results that can be integrated within operational systems. CAPITAL recognized that card issuers need to fine-tune their credit selection strategies if they are to improve their overall portfolio profitability. In addition, issuers looking for ways to increase market share are trying to better measure and understand risks associated with lending to atypical credit segments. CAPITAL hopes to gain a stronger competency in credit decisions, so that it they may be a better guide to institutions acquiring credit card accounts within the highly competitive credit market. "We chose SAS because of its proven track record in business intelligence, its top notch support and its ability to deliver immediate value-add to our business strategies," said Jeffrey J. Aegerter, CAPITAL's president and CEO. "With SAS Enterprise Miner, CAPITAL can analyze large sets of cardholder performance and credit bureau data and then use that information to make better credit decisions." Key customer initiatives for premier programs With SAS as its data mining backbone, CAPITAL has initially focused on two projects -- a customer segmentation analysis program and a customer acquisition program. The objective for the customer segmentation analysis program was to identify distinct behavioral groups within CAPITAL's client portfolios and then formulate strategies for specific credit segments. CAPITAL harnessed SAS to analyze a database populated with transaction and credit data. The organization was able to rapidly apply and test several different segmentation methodologies to determine the most useful model for achieving business objectives. With this customer intelligence, CAPITAL hopes to have keener insight into more effective pricing strategies, a clearer focus and more accurate prioritization of customer retention activities, and a targeted plan for future customer acquisition campaigns. Since CAPITAL relies almost exclusively on its direct channel to acquire new customers, the organization has implemented SAS analytics to fuel its customer acquisition program. Direct marketing campaigns must target prospects that represent the best combination of responsiveness and credit-worthiness. Through a series of models developed using SAS Enterprise Miner, CAPITAL applied this analysis to credit bureau data and prospect databases. With this program, the organization expects to achieve lower marketing costs through higher response rates, reduced defaults and decreased delinquencies for new customers. "We are pleased that CAPITAL Card Services has chosen SAS Enterprise Miner to power its customer initiatives," said Russ Cobb, director of financial services strategy for SAS. "By greatly simplifying and streamlining the process of data mining, SAS Enterprise Miner will help CAPITAL gain and sustain lasting competitive advantage through better business insights."