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Why human-centered thinking proved transformative for a global bank

EY’s human-centered approach helped improve customer experience while ensuring multi-market regulatory compliance.
Related topics
Transformation strategies for banking leaders
Financial services
Banking and capital markets
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The better the question

What if banks focused on truly knowing their customers?

Knowing your customer is critical for banks – but poorly implemented regulatory processes can cause friction.

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The better the answer

Applying innovation at scale through customer-centered design

EY helped the client by developing new ways of thinking and working that put customers at the center of design processes.

“The fundamental desire was to put a truly human lens onto the design of their KYC and AML processes,” says Mark Coombes. This became the heart of the bank’s transformation strategy – in particular for SME customers – with a focus on reducing the burden on customers rather than just streamlining back-office processes.

This meant that rather than focusing purely on the regulatory compliance requirements, Ernst & Young LLP and the bank also aimed to create experiences that reflected how customers actually used their banks – and what they expected from them. Regulatory requirements were, naturally, still vital – but the challenge was to integrate them as seamlessly as possible, in ways the customer would barely notice.

Introducing the CX toolkit

With the help of EY, the bank came to utilize a customer experience (CX) design toolkit that would help it optimize the design and implementation of new products and services, while meeting compliance processes.

The toolkit was based on EY Seren’s Agile Service Design Tool Kit, an approach to creating a better customer journey, and included tools, templates and project frameworks that can help the bank’s teams create an enhanced customer experience and detailed customer journey.

This was originally inspired by the principle of human-centered design, which involves seeking to understand what customers want at each stage of the journey – and, crucially, why – as well as involving them in testing and validating new products throughout the development cycle.

The qualitative research techniques allow for rapid evaluation and insight to be applied to improvements that can then be prototyped and tested with real customers to validate improvements and benefits quickly and cost-effectively. In some cases, co-creation sessions with end users can get to tangible results and improvements that can be implemented immediately. In one example, interviews with clients sharing their experience identified a pain point in how information requests were parceled up into smaller requests. We were able to recommend changes almost immediately in how information requests were made that improved the customer experience and reduced application times and costly, incremental reviews and re-work.

Another critical success factor was the application of an essential service design tool, the Service Blueprint. The Service Blueprint brings not only the customer experience and customer journey to life, but also connects changes in the front stage experience across channels and interfaces, to the operating model, business processes and technology platforms required to support the solution, along with, importantly, the risk, regulatory and controls required, and therefore the measurable benefits they would create. Using Service Blueprints, business sponsors from different markets enabled a quick agreement on priorities and created actionable backlogs of improvements. This led to the elimination of over 1,000 internal processes which both improved customer experience and reduced cost.

The Agile Service Design Tool Kit was built to work within virtual collaboration environments. Which means during the lockdowns of 2020, the tools and methods proved useful in ensuring progress could be made to continue to improve experiences and shift demand for digital channels. According to Mark Coombes, Financial Services Director, EY Seren, when you develop a capability in any organization you define and build it up – eventually the aim is to let it go and release it back to the business.

When you develop a capability in any organization you define and build it up – eventually the aim is to let it go and release it back to the business.

Mark Coombes

Financial Services Director, EY Seren

How EY can Help

  • Global Regulatory Network

    Our Global Regulatory Network, consisting of former regulators and bankers from the Americas, Asia and Europe, provides strategic insights on financial regulation that helps clients adapt to the changing regulatory landscape.

    Read more

One size does not fit all

 

But – as EY teams have found on similar projects with other clients – not all customers have the same needs. So EY collaboration with the bank soon involved adapting the approach to a range of transformation projects, including optimizing the KYC experience, and resolving customer dissatisfaction around online payments for teams ranging from the commercial division to retail.

 

As the bank was global, one of the most important capabilities EY was able to provide was the collaborative power of its EY innovation hubs, which facilitated the participation of teams from all of the bank’s major markets.

 

This hi-tech cross-market collaboration helped ensure that the local nuances of customer and regulatory needs in different markets were considered in the early stages of the development of a global strategy, allowing a far more efficient roll-out – and much stronger results. “Having these advanced ways of engaging and new ways of working are even more relevant in the current COVID-19 pandemic and post-COVID-19 pandemic era,” notes Peter Neufeld, EY EMEIA Financial Services Digital Customer Experience Leader.

 

Thanks to EY’s focus on understanding the reality of the bank’s customers’ needs, the team was able to align its approach to the bank’s operating model, technology platform, risk and regulatory framework, analytics and data capabilities, and importantly, its performance standards.

 

Having thoroughly researched the needs of customers in different markets and created an effective toolkit for the bank, EY helped roll it out through a series of training sessions across 10 markets worldwide. “When you develop a capability in any organization you define it and you build it up for them – but eventually the aim is to let it go and release it back to the business”, says Mark Coombes.

 

The result was a centrally coordinated and globally relevant framework to help local market teams redesign how the bank engages with its customers, now, next and beyond.

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The better the world works

Putting customers first means more effective transformation

EY offerings not only provided tangible improvements in processes, but also became a blueprint for the future.

Customer-centricity requires banks to re-evaluate what they know about their customers and to better understand who their customers are, what they want, what they value, and what drives them. It’s about building a relationship. A human-centered customer journey will help in this process, while also considering regulatory challenges.

In the case of this global bank, EY teams’ initial work ultimately led to a three-year ongoing collaboration. While work was initially focused on developing individual solutions for customer-friendly KYC and AML processes, the CX toolkit was soon progressively implemented across multiple lines of business. Major milestones included:

  • 2016: Initial pilot project
  • 2017: First iteration of the CX toolkit, used by the commercial banking business
  • 2018: Second iteration of the CX toolkit, taken up by the retail banking business
  • 2019: Creation of a centralized design capability across the bank

As a result, EY teams were able to establish and evolve a fully human-centered design capability within the bank.

According to Peter Neufeld, EY EMEIA Financial Services Digital Customer Experience Leader, we were able to establish and evolve a fully human-centered, agile design capability within the bank to accelerate the delivery and impact of their most strategic initiatives across markets.

We were able to establish and evolve a fully human-centered, agile design capability within the bank to accelerate the delivery and impact of their most strategic initiatives across markets.

Peter Neufeld

EY Studio+ EMEIA Financial Services Digital Customer Experience Leader

At the same time, by demonstrating the impact of a truly human-centered approach, powered by real-world inputs and a coherent framework for analysis, EY supported the organization to shift to a genuine transformation in approach, led by customer insight. This enabled the business to pivot from delivering wide-scale generic solutions, to a much more modular and tailored approach that is iterative and flexible.

According to Anna Herdman, Financial Services Senior Manager, EY Seren, we have been able to pivot the business away from delivering wide-scale generic solutions to a much more modular and tailored approach that is iterative and flexible.

We have been able to pivot the business away from delivering wide-scale generic solutions to a much more modular and tailored approach that is iterative and flexible.

Anna Herdman

Financial Services Senior Manager, EY Seren

By designing a series of targeted, measurable changes that resulted in greater value for the end customer, the bank was able to achieve real results:

  • 20-30% increase in NPS (Net Promoter Score)
  • Elimination, optimization or simplification of more than 1,000 internal processes
  • 30-40% increase in efficiency across multiple customer journeys
  • 10-15% increase in revenue across multiple product areas

But the journey with this client is still not quite at an end, as EY continues to work with the bank to hone the toolkit into something that will work with other areas of the business – and to continue to help train up internal teams so they can apply it to future projects.

But at the heart of EY involvement is the desire to put the actual needs of people – both customers and staff – at the center of EY client’s thinking. With this focus on the needs of people – as well as the requirements of regulators – it’s possible to turn efforts to improve compliance into something that can be transformative.

Additional contributors include Mark Coombes – Financial Services Director, EY Seren and Anna Herdman – Financial Services Senior Manager, EY Seren.

The Team

Peter Neufeld

EY Studio+ EMEIA Financial Services Digital Customer Experience Leader
Experienced digital executive. User-centered design champion. Emerging digital trend analyst.
London, GBR

Nigel Moden

EY Global Banking and Capital Markets Leader; EY EMEIA Banking and Capital Markets Lead
Passionate believer in the banking industry as a force for good. Leading advocate for the talent agenda in EY. Builder of diverse teams. Avid cricketer.
London, GBR
Contact us

 

Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) regulations are critical in ensuring that banks run safely and effectively. 

 

Unfortunately, however, satisfying regulatory requirements often means dissatisfied customers. For example, excessive or complex paperwork during the onboarding process might be essential for KYC practices, but can be burdensome and time-consuming for customers to fill out.

 

One major global bank came to EY looking for a way to address this challenge. The client’s renewal of these KYC and AML functions to align with changing regulatory frameworks was creating significant levels of dissatisfaction within their Small and Medium-Enterprise (SME) customer base. According to Mark Coombes, Financial Services Director, EY Seren, “the bank had built these services based on what it thought customers did, rather than what customers actually do.”

 

The bank decided that to design efficient, effective, customer-centric processes, it needed the help of an external collaborator that could bring together human-centered design thinking, technological experience, and a deep appreciation of the challenges of the banking sector and regulatory compliance.

 

In this case, that collaborator was EY Seren, a leader in customer experience-led transformation, coupled with the EY Financial Services teams’ experience in sector-specific risk and compliance.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.
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