The hottest Trend in Banking is the use of Design Thinking to transform banking services.

Most banks and credit unions don't take 'the human factor' into consideration when developing their products and services. But several financial institutions are starting to do just that, using proven business management strategies to foster greater creativity and innovation. This hot new trend in banking is called design thinking and it delivers a toolbox and way of thinking that can help banks break away from their internal process focus to start looking with fresh eyes at how their customers experience their products and services. A word of warning - what you discover may not be pretty!

Instead of focusing on the consumer experience, financial institutions tend to develop products to meet their own internal processes and operational efficiencies. They then tend to put a pretty wrapper on the product and call it a day. Using Design Thinking to solve banking problems focuses teams on the consumer, putting the consumer at the center of product and service development activities. Read more...

There are many examples and successful case studies demonstrating this new trend of using of design thinking in the Banking sector:

1. Bank of America: The Keep the Change program from Bank of America is perhaps the most documented case study of Design Thinking in the banking sector.
2. BBVA: "Spanish banking giant BBVA is training 1,000 staff ‘ambassadors’ to spread good design practice throughout the organization" said Brown, head of marketing, design and responsible business at BBVA. "The most innovative and exciting products on the market are those created at places that incorporate design in every part of the organization, not just the creative department. These companies understand that design is a competitive advantage and that all employees, regardless of their role, should begin to see themselves as a designer who contributes to improving the customer experience.”
3. USAA: In February USAA unveiled its 120-person design studio in Austin to focus on improving digital experiences among customers and employees. The bank, historically a leader in financial services innovation — it was one of the first banks to get into mobile check deposit and online banking, for example — sees people and internal culture as the essence of how it design translates to their customers. So it chose Austin, a tech hotbed, for its design community, versus its home base in sleepy San Antonio
4. Citi: In October 2015, Citi launched its FinTech unit to act as a startup inside a bank dedicated to mobile-first solutions for its consumer banking customers. A month before that, Citi’s Gates joined the bank as part of the then 40-person Citi FinTech unit, to lead its in-house design studios as well as external agencies. His team has designed the user experiences for Citi.com’s various updates, the Citi mobile app and worked on the branding and advertising for Citi FinTech, the Citi Innovation Labs and the Citi Global Consumer Bank.
5. Capital One: Capital One is viewed as the leader in bringing design thinking to the financial industry. The bank proved its commitment to innovative design back in 2011, when it launched Capital One Labs (Labs) - dedicated spaces in the organization where customer-centered innovation is the driving goal. The Lab is credited with the development of the Capital One Wallet and Capital One 360Cafes among many other winning projects. The decision to create Labs, and to give its teams the funding and autonomy to rethink the banking experience, transformed the Capital One culture and led to innovative solutions that changed the way customers — and the industry — think about banking. Another example of Design Thinking's contribution to Capital One's services is One View: a multi-tenant SaaS solution for content management that helps with the on-boarding process of new customers.
6. Deutche Bank (DDB): Germany’s Deutsche Bank endeavored to promote design thinking organizationally by starting with their IT department first rather than imposing it on the entire organization. It first partnered with design thinking experts as well as a small design thinking team in the department that focused solely on completing successful projects. The design thinking transformation at Deutsche Bank went in three phases: Learning (P1), Adapting (P2), and Diffusing
7. National Australian Bank: The National Australian Bank (NAB) partnered with consulting group Oliver Wyman to provide customer-centric solutions for their small and medium enterprise (SMEs) clients.
8. Commonwealth Bank of Australia: CBA released a new app for tablet that Steel says was a product of design thinking, a process he describes as requiring "an open mindset of empathizing, not jumping to what we think is [the] solution. It is about freeing yourself from traditional constraints to get creative juices flowing."
9. DBS Bank, Singapore: In Singapore, one of the pioneers of design thinking in the financial services is DBS Bank. DBS Bank, acclaimed by Euromoney as the “world’s best digital bank” (Groenfeldt, 2018) rolled out their first successful design thinking project ‘DBS Home Connect’ in 2013. Fueled by a leadership that is passionate and serious about entrenching design thinking, DBS transformed its technology infrastructure to accommodate Big Data, AI, and biometrics.
10. OCBC Bank, Singapore: OCBC Bank implemented design principles in its innovation efforts. In coming up with solutions, OCBC used customer insight, co-creation, community engagement, stakeholder involvement and experimentation, adapting from IDEO’s five-step design thinking method.  One of the successful outcomes OCBC Bank developed was a family and kid-friendly bank policy called OCBC FullService Sunday Banking using design thinking. They have also developed Frank Bank, a highly awarded service for youth, through design thinking.
11. BBVA, Madrid Spain: Video describing the use of Design Thinking ambassadors within BBVA.
12. Nedbank, South Africa: Nedbank is using design thinking to address big, knotty internal issues, like centralizing multiple back-offices into one, to serve customers better. The big question is – what impact have they seen on customers? Schools are big business. Banks are governed – and Nedbank is no exception – by Basel 3 rules on liquidity. Schools are liquidity-rich, yet they don’t need cash on site, so helping them to reduce their cash on site and improve their overall liquidity, while getting more funding onto the bank’s balance sheet, enables a bank to lend more. Sounds like a win-win proposition. Wrong. Using design thinking to uncover the real need, Nedbank included teachers and educators – their customers – in the process, in pursuit of radical collaboration. By doing this, they quickly discovered that holding cash on school premises (parents pay a lot of cash into schools for trips and other school services) is a risk, as it attracts thieves. But the real pain point for teachers is the administrative overhead of collecting all the money for school trips, remembering who has paid, who is going, and which parents still need to be chased. School outings enrich pupils’ lives, but the administrative burden on teachers reduces time invested in lesson planning – their core job of teaching. Once it understood the real pain point, Nedbank was able to develop a solution that offered real value to their customers.

     

The trend of banks working with design thinking keeps growing, but this list of the top 12 examples should get you started at least in terms of understanding how design thinking is being used to redefine customer experiences in the banking sector.

Finally, watch this great panel discussion featuring design leaders from Citi, Capital One, Wealthfront and Simple discussing where the banking and financial services sectors are in deploying design thinking. Or if you would like a heavier, research paper to read, try this one.