THE CHALLENGE

Working on a ‘blue sky’ proposition is always an exciting opportunity. FireDrake’s managing partner, Karen Rudich, was asked by a large British global bank to initially assess a simple business idea. This ultimately turned into an opportunity for her client to open brand new revenue streams to an estimated £1bn - once fully implemented; save costs of over £100m; modernise its backbone infrastructure and redefine parts of the banking industry’s practices.

Brought-in by the head of digital banking, Karen was asked to look at an idea that "...although interesting, was missing something" to make a strong commercial proposition. She was provided with a vast amount of consumer research which the client had gathered from across the digital space; access to the bank’s senior management team and a six-week deadline to review the output with the bank’s Retail CEO.

An initial assessment phase served to integrate thinking and research from various business units and functions throughout the bank. The research was used to identify areas of focus and drive solutioning workshops with key stakeholders in order to streamline ideology development. These stakeholders included directors and MDs from departments such as Fraud, Forensics, Infrastructure, Architecture, Legal, Compliance, Business Banking, Current Accounts, Finance, Storage, Networking, Technology, Marketing, Branding, Operations, Digital Banking and Customer Experience, amongst others.

THE SOLUTION

A proposal, including the new business proposition, a business case and two potential user experiences was presented to the bank’s retail CEO: this led to funding approval for the first phase of the programme. It was followed by detailed analysis, design and procurement work alongside a build-up of a core team of 70 individuals throughout the organisation. This team would manage workstreams and change requests that would be required for delivery.

During the first phase of implementation there were consistently at least 250 people working towards the delivery of this programme. This also contributed in a marked way to the bank’s corporate citizenship agenda. Karen handed over implementation of the programme once approval from the FCA was acquired, a number of IP requests had been submitted and financing for phase II had been granted by the bank’s board. The platform and its several programmes will take the bank 3 – 5 years to deliver.