Across two separate engagements, we partnered with two leading UK financial institutions to rethink how customers manage their money.
For one client, we developed an open-market proposition designed to build financial confidence through adaptive, behaviour-led guidance. For the other, we reimagined the current account around customers’ individual needs and the ways they naturally think about and organise their finances.
Although distinct in scope, both projects shared a common ambition: to move beyond generic, unintuitive money-management experiences and create products that feel simpler, more relevant and more personal.
We were engaged to uncover the most valuable opportunities, define differentiated propositions and make them tangible through prototypes that could be tested with customers and taken forward into delivery.
Personalisation in financial services needs to do more than present customers with different content or recommendations. It has to help customers understand their finances, and take actions that feel relevant to their circumstances.
The first engagement began with a broad proposition opportunity. Our client wanted to help customers build confidence in managing their money, but needed to understand where existing propositions were falling short and how a new experience could establish a distinctive role in the market.
The proposition needed to be simple enough to engage customers who were only beginning to take control of their finances, while remaining useful as their behaviours and confidence developed. This meant exploring how guidance could respond to customer behaviour rather than relying on a fixed or uniform journey.
The second engagement focused on reimagining an established product. Current accounts are central to customers’ financial lives, but the tools available to organise and manage money did not always reflect how customers thought about their finances.
The client needed a clear target state that addressed those pain points while establishing a differentiated experience. Personalisation had to be embedded into the structure of the account and its supporting features.
In both cases, the challenge was to translate complex and varied customer needs into experiences that felt clear, coherent and intuitive.
Across the two engagements, our work combined market and customer research, proposition development, rapid design and iterative validation.
We started both by building a detailed understanding of the opportunity. For the open-market proposition, we researched the competitive landscape to identify customer needs, gaps in existing offerings and areas where the client could create meaningful differentiation.
For the current account engagement, we focused more closely on customers’ existing experiences. We mapped the key pain points they encountered and explored the mental models they used when thinking about and organising their personal finances.
These insights gave each project a clear foundation. They allowed us to define propositions around genuine customer behaviours rather than assumptions about how people should manage their money.
Across the two projects, our work included:
For the financial confidence proposition, we used rapid design sprints to explore a range of possible concepts and solutions. Ideas were generated, refined and prioritised before being taken into customer testing.
This enabled the team to validate the central proposition and identify which elements most effectively made money management feel simple and engaging. The resulting first-look prototype brought the experience together and provided a tangible product through which the concept could be explored in greater depth.
For the current account proposition, we translated customer insights into a more intuitive account structure and differentiated feature set. We designed the supporting screens and journeys as a working proof of concept, using iterative customer testing to validate and refine the experience.
The proof of concept was developed into a high-fidelity prototype using the client’s new design system, demonstrating how the target experience could work within the organisation’s evolving digital environment.
The two engagements approached personalisation from complementary perspectives.
The financial confidence proposition focused on how the experience could adapt as customers interacted with it. Behaviour-led guidance created the foundation for a proposition that could respond to individual needs rather than presenting every customer with the same information and journey.
The current account proposition focused on the way the product itself was structured. By designing around customers’ mental models, the experience could more closely reflect how individuals understood and organised their money.
In both cases, prototyping was central to the process.
Rather than leaving the propositions as strategic concepts, we translated them into working experiences that stakeholders and customers could see, use and evaluate. This allowed the teams to test whether the propositions were clear, whether the journeys felt intuitive and whether the designs addressed the needs identified through research.
But customer testing was not treated as a final stage. Concepts were validated and refined throughout the engagements, creating a stronger connection between the original customer insight and the resulting product direction.
The two engagements approached personalisation from complementary perspectives.
The financial confidence proposition focused on how the experience could adapt as customers interacted with it. Behaviour-led guidance created the foundation for a proposition that could respond to individual needs rather than presenting every customer with the same information and journey.
The current account proposition focused on the way the product itself was structured. By designing around customers’ mental models, the experience could more closely reflect how individuals understood and organised their money.
In both cases, prototyping was central to the process.
Rather than leaving the propositions as strategic concepts, we translated them into working experiences that stakeholders and customers could see, use and evaluate. This allowed the teams to test whether the propositions were clear, whether the journeys felt intuitive and whether the designs addressed the needs identified through research.
But customer testing was not treated as a final stage. Concepts were validated and refined throughout the engagements, creating a stronger connection between the original customer insight and the resulting product direction.
Both projects gave our clients a validated proposition and a tangible vision for a more personalised financial experience.
For the open-market proposition, the engagement delivered a working prototype backed by strong stakeholder momentum and organisational buy-in. Having established and validated the initial proposition, the project is now progressing into minimum viable product development.
For the current account engagement, we established a clear target state for the future experience. The high-fidelity prototype brought that target state to life using the client’s new design system and was validated through iterative customer testing.
We also delivered a prioritised feature roadmap, giving the client a practical guide for the next phase of development and a clear connection between the long-term proposition and the capabilities required to build it.
By grounding the work in customer behaviours, pain points and mental models, we created propositions that reflected how individuals actually engage with their finances.
Rapid design and prototyping made those propositions tangible, while customer validation and prioritised roadmaps established clear foundations for delivery.
Together, the projects demonstrate how customer insight, proposition design and iterative validation can create financial experiences that are not only easier to use, but more relevant to the people using them.
We don't just design digital propositions; we help you navigate the complexity of the growth cycle - from validating unmet customer needs to launching future-ready propositions. If you're struggling to define whether personalisation presents a genuine opportunity for you, let’s talk.
