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From insights to ideas, to concepts: the power of co-designing the ideal future state.
The context
Deposits are strategic for a bank, contributing to an increased customer base, liquidity, and economic profit.
While the traditional Retail Deposit market is saturated and competitive, BOA bank (fictitious name) identified an opportunity in the Third-Party Deposit market, which has a small number of competitors (with the market leader owning 70% of the market), and is expected to grow by 75% in the next 5 years.
BOA bank needed to enhance its proposition for both intermediaries and customers, enabling them to use, move, and manage the product in a modern and contemporary way.
Initial discovery with intermediaries and BOA's Business Development Managers identified key areas of improvement:
Onboarding: simplified account opening and KYC verification through digital processes.
Visibility & Access – portal for intermediaries & advisers, providing visibility of their end-customer accounts and enabling self-service.
Payments – enhanced payment capability, allowing intermediaries & advisers to meet end-client expectations.
The objective
The overall objective was to define, design, and deliver a new, enhanced Customer Value Proposition that addressed key areas for improvement.
My role
I joined the team at the end of the discovery phase, with the goal of ideating a solution to bring the CVP to life and prototype concepts to test internally and with intermediaries.
I drafted and workshopped the new CVP, structured and facilitated ideation workshops with internal stakeholders, and then designed the concepts for the key experiences: access and permissions, onboarding, and payments.
The approach
CVP workshop board: Instructions and examples.
CVP workshop board: Points of parity, points of distinction and taboo words.
I adopted a structured, collaborative approach grounded in human-centred design, moving through value proposition definition, ideation, and concept design.
Customer Value Proposition.
I used the CVP canvas and the CVP building framework centred on personas and their Jobs to Be Done, as well as points of parity and differentiation relative to competitors.
I then workshopped the draft with a cross-functional team including Product, SMEs, Design, and BA to ensure clarity and consensus. In a CVP, each word has high importance, so we spent time finding the ones which better resonated.
This process resulted in a new, customer-aligned CVP that could be shared across business units.
We moved from a generic and uninspiring CVP-"Enabling intermediaries and advisers to deliver exceptional service to their clients"-to an improved one, which highlighted needs and points of differentiation:
For intermediaries, service providers, and advisers who need effortless, flexible, and secure ways to help grow, manage, and protect their clients’ wealth, our BOA bank Third-Party Deposit experience provides a streamlined, configurable, and trusted solution — backed by the strength of the BOA bank brand and designed to evolve with their clients’ needs.
Unlike [Competitor], we champion a relationship-focused model that delivers personal, frictionless support — empowering our partners to exceed their clients’ needs today and into the future.
Ideation
Ideation workshop: cross-functional groups working together on the CVP cereal box challenge.
Ideation workshop: cereal box pitch.
Ideation workshop: group discussion.
To translate the CVP into tangible improvements, I facilitated ideation workshops that involved stakeholders from product, technology, design, sales, and governance.
We tested the CVP with the 'cereal box' challenge, where groups had to bring it to life as it was a product to put on a supermarket shelf.
We then focused on the customer experience, working individually and in groups. Each group worked on a dedicated experience moment (onboarding, access/visibility, payments, relationship/service). We mapped current state journeys, drafted a blueprint that leveraged the work of business analysts, and identified known pain points from intermediary and internal interviews.
Ideation workshop: Individual work. Generating ideas with rapid thinking.
Through structured rapid-thinking activities and group discussions, we generated ideas and a narrative for the ideal future experience, turning each pain point into delight.
I then refined and clustered ideas into themes. "Wow" concepts included:
AI-driven document scanning for complex legal documents (e.g. Trusts) during onboarding.
Pre-authorised payment thresholds to speed up the payment process.
Alerts and notifications for transparency and efficiency.
Ideation workshop: key moments and ideas to improve the customer experience of a specific journey moment.
Ideation workshop: themes identification
Ideas clustering: all ideas were digitised and clustered according to different parameters.
Design
I led the design of key experiences to bring the CVP and the ideal future state to life.
Storyboarding the future ideal experience
First, I created storyboards for each experience moment. This step-by-step, scene-based sketch of the BOA bank customer’s journey (and backstage actions) was useful for visualising the desired experience, aligning stakeholders, revealing gaps/risks, and de-risking decisions before moving to the design.
I then moved quickly from paper sketches to high-fidelity designs by leveraging existing design patterns and the design systems.
Focus areas included:
Role-based access and permissions for intermediaries
Digitised onboarding workflows and KYC
Flexible payment settings for advisers and customers
A design system and UI toolkit allowed me to move from paper concept to high-fi very quickly.
New client onboarding
Intermediaries need a way to onboard their clients seamlessly, so they can focus on what matters most: delivering financial advice and service to their clients. Opening a cash management account swiftly is critical. It enables intermediaries to act on investment decisions discussed with their clients without delay.
The onboarding experience will feature:
Smart, dynamic forms will guide intermediaries through the process.
Authenticated state, allowing efficiencies like intermediary details to be pre-populated.
Secure document uploads (e.g. trust deeds), and use intelligent data extraction (AI) to absorb and process documents.
Ability to identify existing BOA bank clients, simplifying the onboarding requirements.
Access levels inside Intermediaries & managing customer accounts
Intermediaries need the ability to manage their own internal access to customers' accounts so they can organise themselves in the way that makes sense for their organisation. As a bank, BOA also needs to ensure that it sets its intermediaries up for success, as well as put the proper controls in place to protect the end customer. Intermediaries come in all shapes and sizes, so creating a digital portal with configurable access that allows flexibility in assigning specific levels of access and permissions for various activities on the account is crucial.
Payments
Payments are a key job to be done for Advisors; they need a way to make safe, quick transactions, to seize investment opportunities, and to service their end-client's wealth management needs. This need must be balanced with ensuring that the clients' accounts are managed correctly and kept secure. This initial concept design outlines how these different payment options could work in the future state; however, further work with risk and legal teams will be required to ensure we strike the right balance between ease of use and protecting our customers.
There is a range of different payment options, including BPay, international payments, and recurring payments, that can be actioned within the same payment flow by offering drop-down menus and choices for users to select from.
The outcome
The concept designs were well-received and generated excitement across the wider stakeholder network.
Alas, for totally unrelated reasons, the project was paused
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