Build What’s Next: Digital Product Perspectives

Embedded Finance: The Evolution of Financial User Experience

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In this part of our conversation, we dive into how big financial institutions handle their incredibly diverse customer base. We're talking about everything from mass-market consumers to high-net-worth individuals and even corporate clients. It's a real challenge to understand and prioritize all those different needs, especially when customer relationships can evolve so much over a lifetime. We'll also touch on the difficulty of reaching those "high-profile" users for research and how AI and better data management are paving the way for more personalized experiences that anticipate what users need, rather than making them dig for it.

Episode Resources:

Michael Lewandowski on LinkedIn: /in/michael-lewandowski-66769b11/

Joseph Johansen on LinkedIn: /in/josephjohansen/

Method Website: method.com

U.S. Bank Website: usbank.com



Josh Lucas:

You are listening to Method's Build what's Next Digital Product Perspectives presented by Global Logic. At Method, we aim to bridge the gap between technology and humanity for a more seamless digital future. Join us as we uncover insights, best practices and cutting-edge technologies with top industry leaders that can help you and your organization craft better digital products and experiences.

Michael Lewandowski:

Welcome back. We're here with JJ and we're continuing our conversation around financial services users and how to design products and experiences for them that really accompany. You know all of the knowledge that you need about that widely diverse set of potential users to help make sure that you're solving for the needs of the business in the opportunity statement that's at hand. And so, jj, you did a great job, as we were in our last session really talking about your background. You've worked in consumer, you've worked in wealth, you've worked in a variety of different areas. You've worked in established products, you've worked in non.

Michael Lewandowski:

I really want to dive in now into this topic of like. How do you really understand you know an institution as large as some of those that you needs prioritizing those needs and designing towards them in ways that you feel like is going to capture as much of the opportunity. And then we'll take some turns later in the conversation around maybe some different parts of populations that are harder to access in terms of research and validation. So maybe, just starting off, you know let's talk about, you know what the diverse set of needs are from a consumer client to a wealth and how do you really think about them and really understand, you know who you're servicing mass market versus different segmentations, and how the opportunity kind of presents itself.

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah, well, and I think the answer is kind of in the question, right, like it's. First of all, you need to understand that they are very different audiences and but with porous boundaries. You know we were talking about personas, the, the. You could have a different persona for a mass market banking customer or a wealth, you know, customer, or even a small business customer, but they, they tend to bleed into each other. So the, the boundaries between them get get really thin, thin or sometimes go away, especially if you look at that customer and how they evolve over their life. So I may start out of college, you know, or you know, I'm younger and less experienced less money, less debt, less, you know, or more debt, and so my needs are going to be very different. As I, you know, grow and, you know, experience more of life, I'm going to accumulate more, probably more debt and more wealth, and so my needs are going to be very, very different. When I think about it from a bank perspective or from a company perspective, it's also important to consider that aspect. So if you look at different banks, their makeup, how they structure their businesses are very, very different, and so there are going to be banks that are heavier in consumer. There are going to be banks that are heavier in business support or corporate, commercial or institutional or whatever that is, and it's important not to lose sight of that so that whatever you're doing to support your customers ties back to your business strategy and your overall objectives.

Joseph Johansen:

I'll show one example and then we can go from there. So if I take number of customers as a basis, so if I look at the consumer end, the mass market end, I'm probably going to have a lot of customers. If I look at the number of transactions of those customers, they're going to be moderate. Each person, I think right now, averages like 30 to 50 transactions of some sort a month. Right, if I look at the wealth that they've accumulated, it's also going to be moderate or small to moderate. Maybe I have a checking savings account with tens of thousands of dollars in it. Maybe there's a credit card and a car loan that kind of offset that a little bit. Credit card and a car loan that kind of offset that a little bit.

Joseph Johansen:

When you layer in wealth, the number of transactions if I'm an active investor are going to go way up. The number of accounts, the number of dollars are also going to go up, but the number of customers that are in that group are typically going to go down. So, as you're thinking about how you serve the needs, you're serving more active user base but a smaller number of them, which does impact how you design the solution. When you go over to where I am now, in the corporate, commercial, institutional space, now you've got many fewer customers, much larger number of accounts, much larger number of transactions. You know some corporations. They may have thousands of accounts, they, you know a typical transaction could be millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, you know. So it's a very, very different space in terms of, like, the volume per client, the product side or on the design side, and I spent most of my time in consumer but I'm trying to design for that full spectrum. That can be a real challenge.

Michael Lewandowski:

Yeah, I really love how you described. You know, in each segment consumer, wealth or commercial there's always, you know, call it mass market, you know middle market, high end of the market type of boundaries and within those you know there's different decisions that need to be made to design for each set of needs. I'm curious, you know, where have you found, you know you get to a place where those user groups are so distinct that they require two different sets of experiences, and how do you strategically make decisions around? You know ways in which you can still meet you know both segments needs, versus what happens when you don't have the opportunity to do that and you're still trying to bridge a gap across populations with diverse needs. And how does that affect some of the ways in which you think about design and experience?

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah, that's a really good question and not an easy one, you know, when you think about so, if you're in the consumer space and you're looking at the emerging, you know client who, like I said, probably has some debt, has very little in the terms of assets, or maybe like, if you want to go way down, like maybe they just have a credit card and that's all they have, and so if you, if their online banking or mobile banking experience has all this other stuff that doesn't relate to the management of that credit card it's just noise getting in the way of what they want to what they want to accomplish.

Joseph Johansen:

So, creating the experiences in such a way that things automatically turn on or turn off based on need or in the in, maybe there's a space where there's some things that I might want, but I might not want giving me as the, as the end user or the customer, the power to turn those things off or turn them on or make them more robust, make them less robust, make them more. Like you know, information graphics is a big one when you get in the wealth space. If I'm a day trader, I want a lot of detail and more of a spreadsheet kind of a view, if I'm just set it and forget it and I've got a robo account, all I want to see is the big picture and those trends. So making sure that what I'm created yes, it's robust, but it also can be as simple as what I, as the end user or the persona that we're targeting, needs- it's very important.

Michael Lewandowski:

I want to get back to some of that configurability here in a minute as we look ahead to what's coming next in terms of trying to meet the needs of the many. I just want to pause, though, for a second to say.

Michael Lewandowski:

I think what's really interesting is you mentioned earlier in our conversation how this world was born in silos, how every individual financial product line had its own digital property and none of those were connected.

Michael Lewandowski:

It feels like every financial institution I talk to these days is trying to get that cross-sell, that multi-product, deeper financial health relationship with their customer base, and so I think it poses really interesting challenges then, as you're talking about. Well, what is the real user group for each set of products and how does that then become a different set of users? When you think about taking a credit card user, as you were explaining, and then maybe making them part of a wealth count, you know type of user and so I just am curious, you know as you think about, you know going from the legacy siloed world to a more unified customer experience. Where have you seen that maybe done well with? You know really good synergy around customer bases versus maybe what are some of the challenges you've seen as people have tried to unify a more holistic approach to being able to present folks their financial lives?

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah. So again, really great question, really challenging answer. I would say most are not doing it especially well and I think the reason is it's really hard to look across the full client journey and get somebody when they're like in high school learning about money and or in college or after high school just trying to figure things out and think about what they need all the way through. You know, on the wealth management side, for example, one of the biggest challenges when I was designing for that space was what do they do after they've accumulated the wealth? There's so much energy spent on helping them accumulate and prepare for retirement and a lot of challenge with helping them understand how to navigate as they transition into retirement. It wasn't something that that at the time was. There was a lot of energy being spent on even though everybody knew man. This is really important. We should get this right.

Joseph Johansen:

And then now we're seeing, like you know, the the unfortunate side where everybody passes away and they've got a lot. You know, if they've accumulated wealth, wealth, what happens when it goes to their children or to whoever is the inheritor of that wealth? If, if the um, if the bank or financial institution hasn't been able to like, create a relationship that goes beyond the person who's passed away, that they're going to take it with where, where they have that relationship. So I know that's something that a lot of smart people are looking at right now as that's a growing challenge for the financial services industry. You know, kind of thinking through how do you do that well and, I would say, to do it successfully kind of goes back to the beginning of our conversation, like understanding who your customers are at each phase of maturity and what they need then so you can build the credibility and the, the, the relationship, so that when you hit those inflection points there, there's loyalty and and willingness to stick around.

Michael Lewandowski:

Yeah, and I think it's a real challenge. Jj, I appreciate you diving in. I don't think there's an easy answer. But not only how do you support an individual across their development and their needs and their financial journey, which is clearly where financial institutions need to head, and it's just been a difficult nut to crack. But there's even that. How do you extend the relationship beyond your primary account holder to those who may be beneficiaries? And I've seen an insurance. You know data that says you know life insurance claims companies only maintain three to 5% of the wealth settled in a claim for a life insurance policy, meaning there's a significant volume of dollars that are going out the door to other institutions once you know that claim has been met and it suggests there is no definition of you know the user beyond the user.

Michael Lewandowski:

you know an expanded definition of the user to include family members and others who may be impacted.

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah, and I would say it extends in the business space as well. I may start a mom and pop shop, you know, and it does well, and my needs change. You know my relationship to my employees change. And if I'm not, you know as a, if you as a financial institution are not there and understand the transition of my needs, like that's another place where you can lose me or, you know, lose the organization as it, as its needs change organization as it needs change.

Michael Lewandowski:

Well, let's stay there just for one more second. In that area of commercial where you are currently working and focused and I know you've worked in wealth as well too where I think this is a challenge, a lot of times when we're working with clients, they're struggling to really get through what I call almost a high profile user, whether it's a.

Michael Lewandowski:

CFO of a commercial organization that you're targeting for a product or experience, or maybe it's you know someone within the investment services industry. That's the end of a B2B solution. There's almost this fear of the end user.

Michael Lewandowski:

We don't want to get you know feedback, or we're afraid to change things for them, even though that may ultimately help solve for more of their problems. Or maybe it's just an accessibility issue, where you know their time is worth so much money that getting you know them as a captive research partner to help understand what their needs are and solve for them. So I'm curious you know what have you done or what have you seen as successful within those either wealth or in commercial spaces where there may be less overall users or they may be of a profile that's a little bit more difficult to access and understand the needs of?

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah. So I'll break that down into two. So first, how do you get these people? How do you get in front of them? And I'll give a couple of examples there. So one, when the higher up the food chain you go in terms of your clients, the more impact they have on the organization, the financial institution that you're serving, impact they have on the organization, the financial institution that you're serving and the more protection there is around them.

Joseph Johansen:

So getting buy-in from the internal stakeholders who support and are supported by those high net worth individuals or institutions is key. An example was working on a wealth management mobile app and it was going to make the client and client's life much, much easier. They were going to be able to see really powerful reporting and charting and it they thought, okay, this is coming and it's taking away from my relationship, it's eroding my ability to connect with this individual. So how we solved it? We put the picture of the advisor front and center in the app and it was like almost powered by this individual. So now, instead of kind of competing and and being a challenger to the advisor relationship, it was augmenting that relationship and created a real positive force and and also like signaled hey, this is not trying to take your job, this is not trying to, you know, push you out. It's trying to create things better for the end customer, which is all of our jobs, and that was very, very successful in managing that.

Joseph Johansen:

When you're dealing with the commercial, corporate space, that gets even more challenging because if you're trying to create a solution for the CFO of a large or even a mid-cap company, their time is very valuable and so how do we reach them?

Joseph Johansen:

And so working through, you know it's an ongoing challenge because there are, like I was talking about earlier, when you go into the corporate, commercial space, institutional space, many fewer customers doing a lot more business, and so you don't want to overpower or overburden those customers with requests, even if your intent is to improve.

Joseph Johansen:

So one thing is to make sure there's awareness of all of the touch points with the customer or the individual, whether it's we've got a database and we track how many times we're hitting them up with surveys or, you know, on the quantitative side, or we're pulling them in for usability testing or focus groups, things like that. On more the qualitative side, but just making sure that we're aware of where and how we're touching them and that their handlers where and how we're touching them and that their handlers the people who work with them most are also aware and understanding like there are legitimate concerns with you. Know we don't want to annoy you, know, a multimillion-dollar client who's going to walk out the door and go someplace else because they don't like the way we're treating them, so being very, very careful in that respect.

Michael Lewandowski:

Yeah, I think that's fantastic.

Michael Lewandowski:

We started the conversation with believability and personas, and it feels like we've really moved into this area of trust of you know, if we're going to take some of your time, we're going to deliver you business value in return as a result of it, and I think something you said to me actually after the tech talk, which really spurred this conversation today, was you don't know until you ask. And so unless you go out there and actually ask a key customer of yours their willingness to participate in research, to explain what their needs are, to allow you to observe so you can make their lives easier, better, more productive you don't know that answer, and so it never hurts just to ask the question and see if you can't get the answer. And then I think there's a lot of good techniques in there in terms of what you described, in terms of navigating stakeholders and expressing intent, purpose and the value that comes out of it.

Joseph Johansen:

And it's a process, right. Sometimes it can be discouraging because you've got this new shiny thing that you want to put out there into the world and they're just not available. And so I think another strategy on that is getting proxies. Like maybe I can't get the CFO every time, but can I get one of their lieutenants? Is there somebody internal who works with them enough that they really understand that world and how they work, and so I can talk to them and get at least an approximation? And then in those true moments that matter, I'm able to get the more harder to get as you can to the source of truth you know as possible right and that gives you more than you knew before to move forward with.

Michael Lewandowski:

Well, let's go ahead and wrap our conversation today with a look forward. What I really liked about what you were talking about a few moments ago was configurability, and I think technology is opening doors that didn't used to exist around the ability of products and experiences to meet the needs of diverse sets of users through things like configurability, or even recognition of particular behavioral patterns and the servicing of different types of experiences up to those individuals that maybe fit their persona a little bit better. Do I want a lot of information? Do I want only a little bit of information? So, as you look ahead and think about what might be next in terms of design, what might be next in terms of the technology and the capabilities to personalize things for experiences, what excites you? Are there things that you've seen out there that make you feel like you might, as a design leader, be able to facilitate the needs of more of the total population based on what you're seeing happen?

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah, so definitely, I think. So. Everybody's talking about AI, machine learning, all that kind of stuff, so that would be an obvious answer, and I think there is like that is helping us in a lot of important ways, but what it's also doing is it's forcing us to clean up our data in a lot of important ways. But what it's also doing is it's forcing us to clean up our data, and I think that can't be underestimated. A big part of the challenge before of configurability is because you've got all these different data silos that don't really talk to each other, and so it's hard to get a complete picture of the customer and what they may or may not need, and I think that's changing, because it has it has to change your, your, you know, ai tools are only as good as the data that powers them, and a lot of that's going to be internal data.

Joseph Johansen:

So I think that's something that excites me. It's something that that you know, forward thinking, um, individuals and companies have been trying to do for a long, long time, and I think the time is right for that. On the technology side, I also think the tools have gotten a lot more mature, both in terms of like the design tools, but also like the ways of understanding customers and their needs, the way to bring that into an app or a digital experience, are so much more robust than they've ever been, and so I think that the ability to make some of that happen um, whether it's configurability or you know, what really excites me is like don't make me think about it, don't make me configure, understand what I'm doing and, you know, learn from those patterns, and I think that that's you know. We're going to see a lot more of that in the coming days it into the product design itself.

Michael Lewandowski:

And talking about the innovative ways in which, if behaviorally, you can notice there's a lack of feature adoption within a product, what might you be able to do to prompt tool tips, to prompt incentives, to prompt engagement and really drive the behaviors that you're looking to do? And I think you're right there that that monitorability of what's happening within the experience itself can create opportunities to design in ways to improve engagement within experiences in ways that I think will be really unique and really help users think less but get more out of experiences.

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah, I'm really hopeful, you know, and I hope it comes about, because I think sometimes the approach is, oh, we want clients to do more with this. Therefore, we're going to create more features and more things for them to interact with and do, and there comes a point of saturation where it's like, if they're not all things that I really want or want regularly, it can actually take away from the experience. So the smarter we can get at understanding like what do I need when, and make sure that those are really easy to get to and I can get to other stuff, but like, don't make me wade through it I think we're going to be creating a lot better experiences for clients and customers.

Michael Lewandowski:

I think we're just at the beginning. Honestly, jj, there's so much opportunity in the way the technology is evolving. Undoubtedly, the more we know about our users, the more we can serve not only a single experience up to them, but many to come. Yes, Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to share your experiences with our audience, and so we appreciate you. Thanks so much.

Joseph Johansen:

Yeah, happy to be here, it was a lot of fun, thank you.

Josh Lucas:

Thank you for joining us on Build what's Next Digital Product Perspectives. If you would like to know more about how Method can partner with you and your organization, you can find more information at methodcom. Also, don't forget to follow us on social and be sure to check out our monthly tech talks. You can find those on our website. And finally, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes. We'll see you next time.