How does a financial services firm differentiate through digital transformation, in an industry of ‘sameness’?
The Challenge
Every financial institution claims to be building a digital future, yet most fail to articulate how exactly digital technology will be deployed to create differentiated value propositions. A leading US investment service firm partnered with us to make sure their digital transformation was tied to a fundamentally different way of thinking about investing.
Our Approach
- To avoid the ‘sameness’ trap of digital investing services, we chose not to focus on digitizing investing from a user perspective. Instead, we took a step back and tried to understand the human behavioral assumptions driving the dominant industry logic.
- We led a comparative study of people’s relationship to the future and the role of investing within it. We identified gaps between the industry’s existing value logic and people’s emerging mental models for building meaningful life through investing.
The Key Insight
As people’s relationship with the future changes, change in investing logic follows.
When financial services firms focus on technology or a seamless user experience, they often fail to reap the benefits from digital transformation projects. Digital should first and foremost be seen as a set of tools for creating a more valuable alignment with human aims and corporate value creation.
The Outcome
01.
We developed a clear North Star vision for developing investing services
02.
We designed three new growth platforms, each with a clear innovation blueprint that shows how digital technologies can be applied to developing deeply meaningful consumer experiences that do not exist yet
