Designing a World-Class Banking Solution for Painless Onboarding

Business challenge

Our client, one of the world’s leading banks based in Dubai, was on a path to digital and business transformation with the aim of providing user-friendly banking experiences across the globe. But for that to happen, they needed to deliver exceptional online banking design to guide their new customers through the enrollment process using a next-gen biometric tablet.

The bank’s outdated and time-consuming procedures for everything from opening bank accounts to applying for credit cards called for a complete revamp. Meanwhile, our client’s main competitor was quickly gaining an edge with a new solution for instantly issuing cards.

To eliminate paperwork, cut the time of customer onboarding in banking, and remain competitive on the market, our client charged Intellias with designing a top-quality tailor-made FinTech solution that would ensure a seamless user journey. To add to the challenge, our team was expected to do everything from market research and gathering customer requirements to delivering the MVP within just three months.

Mobile banking onboarding solution delivered

Intellias set up a team of expert designers responsible for building the MVP from scratch, including UI/UX design services, visual components, animations, and interactive prototypes. Before getting to the banking software design work, our first milestone was to reinvent the processes of client onboarding in banking based on market analysis, human-centered research, customer feedback, our client’s input, requirements discussions, business model discovery, and validation.

The next milestone was to build a customer journey map to demonstrate the steps a client goes through to open an account. This UX journey mapping also gave an idea of how the application would work from the moment a new client enters the bank and is handed a tablet through the rich set of benefits they would have at their disposal as a cardholder.

Another important step was designing interactive wireframes representing the structure of the app, including the screen flow, functionality, and a set of required elements. The wireframes helped us discard irrelevant ideas. We also used these interactive prototypes to test the solution with users and stakeholders.

To make the experience of digital onboarding in banking smoother for new customers, our team came up with a simple user flow design that boils down to three key elements:

Interactive bubbles
Bubbles serve as a filter for customer preferences. Users can choose the three bubbles that best fit their rewards preferences and prioritize those interests by tapping the bubbles one to three times. Based on the user’s monthly income and interests, the system suggests the most suitable cards.

Best match
Users can swipe up and down to view the two best match bundles, read more information on them, and select a card.

Insert ID card
Since the Android tablet used by our client is equipped with extensive ID verification capabilities, a user only needs to insert their ID card and most of the required application fields will be filled in automatically. This significantly accelerates the confirmation process, frees staff to focus on other tasks, and improves the first-time customer experience with the bank.

Business outcome

Thanks to Intellias extensive UI/UX expertise, our client’s idea for a best-in-class mobile banking solution that increases customer satisfaction and commitment has been effectively validated. Our concept design will address some of the most common challenges in customer onboarding in banking. It will also facilitate interactions between staff and customers, ease new users into banking products with onboarding, and thus enhance customers’ experiences with the bank.

Our UI/UX team successfully designed a high-quality product for onboarding in digital banking within an extremely tight timeframe. Over a period of only three months, we helped our client completely reconsider their banking processes, optimize account opening, and deliver an MVP to drive further business transformation.

The product is now being tested on real users as our client prepares for the next iteration. To help our client’s delivery team deal with the strict time constraints, Intellias designers animated and exported several parts of the solution as code so developers could integrate them directly into the application.

Using customer onboarding best practices in banking we developed that brings these advantages to our client:

• A high-performing and interactive application design that solves customers’ problems
• A simpler and more optimized account opening process
• A customized banking experience for users
• Increased customer loyalty and trust
• Confidence in the product roadmap based on a proof of concept rather than assumptions
• A product that’s nimble and competitive on the market
• Onboarding in 15 minutes rather than 3 days
• Application forms with 21 fields instead of 74 (228 fields for a credit card application)
• Fewer declined applications and errors
• Cost reductions on payroll and associated expenses

For a full showcase of our banking application design, check out our project presentation on Behance.