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

Design Thinking helps businesses to create user-centric products and services by discovering insights into user needs, applying these insights to their business model and generating innovative ideas.

In this five-part series, Sarah Dickins gives advice on how Design Thinking techniques can help you to orientate your product development around user need.

In 2017, employees, managers, and partners of Société Générale Global Solution Centre agreed that invoices based on time tracking and project allocation were a chronic and painful challenge.

This is an example of accelerating a transformation through co-design. Eighty-two professionals gathered, representing OTP’s whole organization. Together, they were able to achieve months of work in just three days.

The banking industry has become increasingly concerned over the challenge that emerging fintech startups pose to banks’ traditional ways of doing business and the threat that they present to revenue streams. In response, many banks have created internal innovation labs to counter these risks.

If the one product you’re known for is ubiquitous, how can you stop your customers from leaving for other banks?

For Capital One, the answer was a small laboratory within the larger bank. The group leading this innovative push calls themselves Capital One Labs, and their secret weapon is free coffee.

According to the UXDA (UX Digital Advantage), the finance industry has experienced a turbulent period of Fintech disruption in recent years. In fact, 75% of the finance sector companies surveyed by KPMG stated that changing customer needs is the key area where disruptive Fintech companies have been challenging the traditional finance businesses.

Ever since it became clear that smart design led to the success of many products, companies have been employing it in other areas, from customer experiences, to strategy, to business ecosystems. But as design is used in increasingly complex contexts, a new hurdle has emerged: gaining acceptance (for the new solutions).

Co-creation and empathy are fundamental principles of design thinking that enable teams to collaborate and solve user problems at pace. Cross-functional collaboration and deep understanding of end-users help to break down barriers between organization silos, resulting in an aligned vision and more holistic, user-centered solutions.

Whether it is fintech, new regulations, or increasing customer demands, banks need to rethink the way they address wicked challenges related to designing and launching value-adding products and services that meet current and future customer needs. Design thinking has emerged as a highly effective and customer-centric method for solving these types of business problems.