Homeet — Product Design
Choose your own way to live wherever.
Intro —
The first service of human banking.
As Head of Service Design at Bankinter, I started a deep research project named Human Banking in January of this year. In the first phase of the project, we conducted several interviews with different types of users: clients, potentials, old and young people trying to understand the most important needs of people, their perception of banking, and the more common behaviors when they think in money.
After the research and interviews, we analyzed the insights and worked with them in different co-creation workshops with users and business stakeholders. As the fruit of these workshops and after various refinement seasons, we discovered a nice business opportunity exploring renting and housing topics.
The idea —
Adapt our products and services to the moment of the user's life.
Making deeper research in this topics, we understood the issues and pain points and we unearthed some very interesting insights and negative feelings about it:
Most users missed the support of the bank when they want to find a house (to achieve independence from their parents or live with their partner) whether they want to buy or rent. Most of them feel that the bank is only there when they have to apply for a mortgage, but they don't understand anything about the real need for housing.
23.5% of the Spanish population lives on rent. 56% of them expect to buy a home in 4 years.
Contrary to what we thought, a large percentage of users intended to buy a home, and we discovered that the average time until they make the decision is 4 years. When they decide to buy, Bankinter wasn't part of their options, either by positioning or by price. Therefore, we faced the difficult challenge of designing a service that could meet the needs of users at the time of rental, allowing Bankinter to take an advantageous position at the time that the user decides to move from rent to purchase.
Here are some of the things users told us:
“I would like that my bank helps me to access the house that I want, not that they just try to sell me a mortgage.”
“During the time I lived for rent, it was hard to save until getting the apartment that suited my preferences.”
“With my lifestyle, rent is the formula that allows me not to be physically tied.”
Opportunity —
Attract customers at the time of rental to be their first choice when deciding to buy a home.
Analyzing the market and talking with different business areas of the bank, we could see how knowing the financial behavior of the user for several years will allow us to anticipate and offer excellent conditions in their mortgage application with low risk.
This would change our positioning strategy. Instead of appearing at the end of the decision process, where we aren't competitive, we will anticipate the purchase decision and will be the first to offer the best price.
There are no competitors.
Within the housing sector, banks are not offering any type of support or accompaniment to their clients for rental options.
If we position ourselves within the territory of rental housing, we will be pioneers in the sector and we will improve our positioning within the user's mind when the process of buying a home begins.
Prototyping —
A service designed to live wherever you want, however you want.
Currently, we are working on two lines: on the one hand, with the business team to balance numbers and find the best commercial hook to attract new customers at the time of rent a house; On the other hand, with the design team to build prototypes that allow us to test the service with users and find an attractive value proposition to generate engagement and retain the client during the time necessary until he decides to buy.
Innovation —
Our first approach to IoT systems.
In order to design a truly differential value proposition, we have detected a great opportunity to integrate IoT systems into the service. We are currently researching and testing with sensors and devices such as Alexa or Amazon Eco to find the best way to integrate this technology into our service in a useful and attractive way for our customers.
Bankinter has always been considered one of the most innovative banks in Europe. In 1993, it became the first online banking in Spain, giving routers to its customers to help them enter the digital world.
Thinking and playing with this idea, today we are considering the possibility of becoming the first bank to give IOT devices to its clients, who could control their daily expenditures and consumption associated with the home, always connected to their bank accounts.
Summary —
Users and banking, connected by design.
We have obtained very positive feedback from the bank stakeholders and from users regarding this new service. To have created a tangible service from a big research project is being a great success for the design department that is allowing us to show the value of this type of process in a traditional organization.
We hope to finish the conceptualization of Homeet in the coming months to build an agile team that develops the minimum viable product after the summer and allows us to market the service very soon.
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