Emerging markets bank: designing and delivering a winning market entry strategy

The Challenge

Emerging market populations are increasingly dominated by young people; a large and growing market segment which is often overlooked by banks given their lack of perceived short-term value potential. However, demographic and market changes have made the young adult segment increasingly attractive. Across multiple markets, youth segments have a tendency towards digital behaviours, are increasingly becoming better-educated and are proven to be more likely to adopt financial and digital products. This makes them a highly attractive, growing segment, not just for short-term revenue growth but also long-term sustainability.

Our cross-skilled team of experts worked with the bank collaboratively and at pace, devising a proposition design process to build on their strategy to grow in the young adult segment. Our client required support both understanding key demographic, digital and innovation trends, as well as our best-in-class rapid prototyping and design thinking expertise to design, test and iterate a compelling youth-focused value proposition. Further, to ensure this proposition concept could be driven directly into execution, it needed to be supported by a comprehensive business case and actionable roadmap to enable rapid, efficient execution.

The Approach

We ran a 5-week design sprint in which we validated our client’s strategic priority to grow in the young adult sector, before confirming customer demand for a young adult digital banking solution. We interviewed 20 internal stakeholders to gain a deep understanding of the current business landscape and conducted extensive market research to identify key market trends in the digital landscape, including competitor activity, new entrants and market gaps. Following this, we ran a three-day design thinking workshop with a cross-functional team to produce low-fidelity prototypes – these where then tested through 50 tests and 800 customer surveys. Feedback from this process fed into the consolidated prototype, around which a comprehensive business model canvas was built, identifying revenue drivers as well as core deliver capabilities. In order to make the business model canvas and proposition design actionable and practical for our client, we also conducted an initial feasibility assessment for the proposition MVP and developed a tangible execution plan, enabling stakeholders to run seamlessly from design through to delivery.

The Impact

Leveraging our unique approach to product and proposition design, our client was able to maximise speed of market validation and customer insight generation, utilising low-cost methods. The MVP prototype we delivered was build-ready, supported by a comprehensive delivery roadmap and a detailed business case outlining forecast costs and revenue drivers that would seamlessly facilitate a go / no-go decision. Our specialists also worked with our client to upskill them in agile product development and rapid prototyping, building future-fit internal capabilities within their teams.