Reconstructing hidden US financial-services micro-markets from regulator data and public fragments
Databases list banks and insurers, not the segments where an IT services firm can win. Connecting regulator filings, job posts and partner pages brings those micro-markets and their buyers into view.
- Challenge
Databases grouped financial services by size and type, hiding the segments that mattered.
- Approach
OSINT across filings, job posts, partner pages and agendas, with every hypothesis tested.
- Result
An evidence-backed micro-market map, told as a story leadership can act on.
The situation
Commercial databases describe US financial services by asset size, sector code and headcount. They do not show which institutions run ageing core systems, depend on an outsourcer or face regulatory pressure to fix technology. A firm targeting from those databases lands in crowded segments where large integrators already hold the relationships. The segments it could win stay invisible, along with the people who buy there.
The question that mattered
Which US financial-services micro-markets have a technology need the firm can meet, and who decides there, when no database shows it?
What we did
- 1
Frame testable hypotheses
Turn leadership's assumptions into claims evidence can confirm or reject, such as whether regional banks on older core platforms lack in-house engineering.
- 2
Collect public fragments
Draw on regulator data and enforcement actions, annual reports, core-provider partner pages, conference agendas, technology job posts and social intelligence on leadership teams.
- 3
Connect and test
Link fragments at institution level, so a job post, a consent order and a vendor case study combine into a picture. Drop hypotheses the evidence does not support, and wargame how incumbent integrators would respond.
- 4
Tell the market story
Present the findings as a data story: which micro-markets hold up, why they are reachable and who decides. Some turn out to buy through shared service organisations, not institution by institution.
What we delivered
The evidence and working documents the team kept.
- Hypothesis log: each claim, the evidence and the verdict
- Source map of the public datasets used for each segment
- Micro-market map with every institution linked to its evidence
- Decision-makers traced through leadership pages and social profiles
- Leadership narrative pack with wargame notes on incumbent integrators
The outcome
Hidden micro-markets
made visible, with evidence
Weak hypotheses
dropped before they shaped targeting
Decision-makers
traced in segments databases missed
Incumbent responses
anticipated through wargaming
Leadership debates segments using the evidence trail behind each segment, not assumptions about where the market should be.
What changed in the GTM motion
Market questions now go through hypothesis, evidence and test before they shape targeting. The firm keeps the source map, so new segments can be investigated with the same method instead of buying another database.
Services in this programme
Case studies
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