Design Thinking has found many applications in the finance sector within financial institutions. It should not come as a surprise as financial institutions, like any other businesses, have to focus on the customer and their needs in order to succeed. They are also subject to the same disruption from digital technologies and the shift from physical to more virtual engagements with customers, faster ways of transacting, access to greater information and better investment tools that digital can offer.
There are many examples of design thinking in finance and financial institutions such as:
- FIDELITY: This article highlights the work of Fidelity, who people can rely on for easy, convenient systems to stay on track with their retirement savings. Through the Fidelity Lab's design thinking work they discovered that when it comes to saving for important near-term goals (think: vacation, house, or wedding), people tend to be less organized. Read how they designed a service to help people achieve their short term goals.
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MASSMUTUAL and INTERCORP GROUP: In this article Tim Brown and Roger L. Martin discuss the design thinking work for finance that they did with MassMutual and Intercorp group (South America)
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INTUIT: The original version of Quicken offered only one-third the features that many competing products had, but with an important difference: It was well designed. Instead of looking like a spreadsheet, it displayed the familiar images of a check register and an individual check. Because the design made using the product so intuitive, Quicken immediately became the market leader in personal finance software.
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HONG KONG: This article discusses how design thinking’s user-centric approach is helping Hong Kong embrace a cashless future as the world rapidly moves towards a cash-lite society with the continuing global spread of the coronavirus disease, Covid-19, is helping to accelerate the demand for digital payment services. Many people have been adopting social distancing measures during the pandemic and trying to avoid contact with people through the use of bank notes and coins by choosing digital payment methods or shopping online instead.
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E*Trade: In this article you will learn about E*Trades Design Thinking project to achieve a service offering (Adaptive Portfolio) that enables a user to go from the idea of investing to an investment in 5 minutes.
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Pieter Baert's presentation gives a brief explanation of Design Thinking and then goes on to explain how it can help financial Institutions to innovate. He does a great job of explaining how technology changes peoples expectations and therefore needs.
Why the increased interest in Design Thinking in the Financial sector? The Financial Brand says the following: "Design thinking is big with technology firms who tend to focus first on the consumer experience. This fact alone makes it likely that more banks and credit unions will be turning to design thinking, since they increasingly find themselves competing against both megatech and fintech firms."