Customer data glossary

Single customer view (SCV)

By Art Kukharenko · Published 2026-10-17 · Updated 2026-10-18

A single customer view (SCV) is a consolidated record of everything an organisation holds about one customer across products and channels, used to make consistent decisions.

Part of the Learn hub and the customer data glossary.

What it means in practice

A single customer view answers the question "who is this customer to us, across everything?". It depends on identity resolution to link accounts and interactions and on survivorship rules to settle conflicts, as in a golden record. It is narrower than customer 360, which adds analytics and context, although vendors use the terms loosely.

There is a regulatory homonym. In UK deposit protection, the PRA Rulebook's Depositor Protection Part defines a "single customer view" as "a single, consistent view of a depositor's aggregate eligible deposits with a firm" and sets out SCV requirements for firms in its Chapter 12 1. That is a regulatory requirement about aggregating a depositor's eligible deposits, not a marketing profile. The overlap is the underlying discipline: one verified record per customer that aggregates accounts correctly.

Other sectors build comparable views for their own reasons. Gambling operators, for example, build cross-product views for responsible-gambling work; the linked article covers what regulators expect. Whatever the driver, a single customer view needs a stated purpose, because a view that combines everything about a person can be used in ways the person never expected.

Example (UK banking): a deposit-taker links a customer's current account, savings account and mortgage under one identity, so deposit totals are correct for the PRA requirement and marketing does not offer a savings product the customer already holds. The first use is a rule; the second must still respect consent and purpose limitation.

Golden record: the resolved attribute values.
Customer 360: the broader contextual view.
Identity resolution: the linking step.
Customer data platform (CDP): a common home for the view.
Consent state: what limits its use.

Where it matters

Single customer view: definition and how to build one: regulatory uses in banking and gambling.
Single customer view for gambling operators: what regulators want.

Back to the customer data glossary or the Learn hub.

Frequently asked questions

Is a single customer view the same as customer 360?

They overlap. A single customer view stresses completeness of identity and holdings (one person, all accounts); customer 360 stresses breadth of context. Many vendors use them interchangeably, so check the definition in any contract.

Is a single customer view legally required?

Only in specific regimes, such as the PRA requirement for UK deposit-takers. For marketing and service no law requires one, but data protection law governs what you may do with it.

How do you build one?

Resolve identities across systems, agree survivorship rules, keep lineage and source records, expose the result through an access-controlled API, and test it against known customers.

Sources

PRA Rulebook, Depositor Protection Part (definition of "single customer view"; SCV requirements, Chapter 12) Open source

This entry is general information, not legal advice.