1. Transforming the loan experience at a leading Caribbean bank
Source: Unsplash - Alex Starnes
How might we transform a loan service process from two weeks to ten minutes while improving customer experience, making it digital, easy, and transparent?
Client: Leading Caribbean Bank - Caribbean - 2021
Role: Associate Design Director at McKinsey
CONTEXT
This client is a leading financial institution located in sixteen countries around the Caribbean. Their goal was to execute a digital customer experience transformation in banking, guaranteeing their leadership in the region for the following years. They partnered with McKinsey to overhaul their Loan Services vertical. Our project had three workstreams: technology architecture, customer experience, and agile methodology. We hired and trained the team, built a new culture mindset, trained the bank’s leadership, and designed a totally new loan experience to disrupt the Caribbean market status quo.
Source: Bank's Archive - Mikelya Fournier
CHALLENGE
The Caribbean lags behind other areas in the Americas in building successful digital experiences, which are especially critical for loan services. At our client, customers took two to four weeks to be approved for a personal loan as low as US$ 500. The process was bureaucratic, requiring more than ten documents, and signatures on seven different documents with more than 20 pages of technical legal language. Customers usually depended on lenders to help them understand the paperwork, creating an expensive, high-touch process for the bank. Our challenge was to digitalize this process, shortening it from 2 weeks to 10 minutes.
KEY QUESTIONS
How can we digitalize the loan process?
How can we make the UX simple, effortless, and trustworthy for customers?
How can we redesign the contract to make it easy to read and allow for digital signature?
What capabilities will we need to develop in the bank’s junior design team?
★ I designed the landing page for the application.
GOALS
As Design Director, my goal was to infuse an innovation culture within the bank by bringing all the teams (Credit, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Marketing, and Product) to the design process to innovate.
Our Critical Goals:
1. Streamline the service
Map the service blueprint and define processes to be streamlined to a ten-minute digital experience, preventing customers from talking with lenders.
2. UX writing for transparency
Simplify the legal terms and redesign the contract into a simple document that clients could sign digitally (Only bank to do this in Barbados and Jamaica).
3. Cutting-edge financial experience
Modernize the digital experience to compete with global fintechs like N26 in Germany, Robinhood in the USA, and Nubank in Brazil.
4. Implement agile design method
Apply agile design methods to define value propositions, the minimum viable product’s features, and prioritize the design backlogs in two-week sprints.
★ MY ROLE
Associate Design Director, McKinsey
Function as bank's Interim Head of Design, reporting directly to the Vice President of Retail Banking.
Hired and trained the bank's Head of Design and the 8-person team
Implemented best practices for agile design methodology
Fostered new customer experience culture
Trained the bank’s leadership in the business value of design
Delivered design workshops throughout the bank
Defined design principles and guided the team in building, testing, and communicating our solution to the bank's stakeholders
We took the followings steps in our two week process:
Design Process Diagram
I led the first two-week concept sprint and designed these initial wireframes, which we aligned with stakeholders.
We applied 1:1 user testing with 7-12 users every sprint cycle to validate our flow. I trained the designers to define and run the test missions.
I trained the bank’s designers to use Maze to mass-test the new flow with 100 people remotely bi-weekly.
I prepared the solution documentation for developers’ hand-off after validating with Product Owners, Subject Matter Experts, and Developers.
DELIVERABLES
We delivered a new digital flow for credit loans. Customers can get loans in as fast as two minutes.
Working with the Credit and Risk teams, we automated approval for current customers.
In the case of new customers, the process takes only one business day for a document check.
Our client became the only bank in the region to provide this type of service, a true market advantage.
The new flow started with direct questions for clients to simulate how much they would pay in installments. This type of information was previously only available at a branch location.
★ I was the lead designer responsible for guiding the team to build this new flow and define the User Interface specifications.
We led the Legal and Compliance teams in an innovation and UX writing process, turning seven complex legal documents into one straightforward file with easy-to-understand text.
As a customer said:
"No other bank has an application so easy to understand that makes me comfortable to get a loan by myself. It is a game-changer."
We managed to find a balance between providing all information required by law and presenting a clear, simple message to customers.
The offer screen was the most praised by customers. A specific Caribbean customer's behavior is to try to understand the credit offer in detail. Before, they relied on lenders to explain the terms. Now, they feel comfortable understanding every aspect by themselves. The satisfaction rate was 4.95/5 when testing it with 100 people.
★ ︎I was responsible for guiding the designers on the UX writing and validation.
Commercial and Innovation Impact
We reduced the application process time to 2-10 minutes. The satisfaction rate is 4.9/5, and many testers called our app the best bank experience in the country. Keywords associated with the app are "innovative," "fast," and "transparent."
In the research phase, customers showed fear of using the application without being supported by a lender. Now, 100% of testers answer “no” to the question: "With the current flow, do you miss having contact with a lender?"
In a market where less than 30% of customers use digital online banking and prefer to rely on branch services out of fear, this is very exciting.
The contract became one single file, and customers just had to drag the slider to accept it. Signing a loan contract digitally was an innovation for the Caribbean market.
★ I led the legal innovation squad helping the Legal, Compliance, and Risk teams to use design thinking to innovate the contract experience.
Impact on Myself
I consolidated myself as a design and agile methods leader at McKinsey with this project. I got confidence in training c-levels and spreading the customer experience culture in a very rigid company structure, from compliance to data analytics, to become more innovative and build a disruptive experience. I learned to scale my impact.
