Customer attrition analysis for financial services using proportional hazard models

This paper studies the topic of customer attrition in the context of a European financial services company. More specifically, we investigate predictors of churn incidence as part of customer relationship management (CRM). We contribute to the existing literature: (1) by combining several different types of predictors into one comprehensive retention model including several ‘new’ types of time-varying covariates related to actual customer behaviour; (2) by analysing churn behaviour based on a truly random sample of the total population using longitudinal data from a data warehouse. Our findings suggest that: (1) demographic characteristics, environmental changes and stimulating ‘interactive and continuous’ relationships with customers are of major concern when considering retention; (2) customer behaviour predictors only have a limited impact on attrition in terms of total products owned as well as the interpurchase time.