A METHODOLOGY FOR IMPROVING THE FINANCIAL EFFICIENCY OF INVESTMENTS DIRECTED TOWARD BUILDING CUSTOMER EQUITY IN COMMERCIAL BANKS

The increasing digitalisation of financial services and intensifying competition among banks, fintech companies and platform-based financial service providers require commercial banks to reconsider the principles used to evaluate investments in customer acquisition, retention and development. Conventional approaches frequently treat customer-oriented expenditure as a current operating cost and assess its effectiveness through short-term indicators such as the number of acquired customers, campaign conversion, transaction volume or immediate revenue. Such measures, however, do not fully reflect the long-term financial value generated by sustainable bank–customer relationships. This study develops a methodological framework for evaluating and improving the financial efficiency of investments directed toward the formation of customer equity in commercial banks. The proposed approach integrates customer lifetime value, retention probability, product penetration, cost-to-serve, expected credit losses, capital charges and the bank's required rate of return within a unified financial evaluation system. Customer equity is consequently interpreted not merely as a marketing indicator but as the aggregate risk-adjusted economic value of the bank's customer relationships. The study proposes the concepts of Risk-Adjusted Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Equity Investment Efficiency for evaluating the incremental economic return generated by customer-oriented investments. The methodology distinguishes between the existing value of a customer base and the additional value attributable specifically to an investment decision, thereby reducing the risk of overstating investment effectiveness. The framework may be applied to investments in digital banking, customer acquisition, loyalty programmes, CRM systems, service quality, data analytics, cross-selling and customer retention. Its application can support more efficient allocation of financial resources and strengthen the relationship between customer strategy and the long-term financial performance of commercial banks.