Discover & Define

Partnering with our UX Research team, we were able to conducted generative user research with both newcomers in Canada and prospective newcomers still in their home country.

The research indicated that many newcomers simply bring cash, gold or other valuables into the country because it was too difficult to set up a bank account before arriving. This put them at risk of theft, fraud, or loss… not to mention it was simply inconvenient.

One of the main challenges that our research identified was that, in countries like India, BMO had little-to-no brand awareness. Users indicated that they were most likely to rely on family, friends and paid consultants to advise them on which bank to use in Canada. In some cases they were also unfamiliar with the rules and regulations relating to visa requirements.

From an experience design perspective it was clear that we would need help inform customers while also building trust.

As Senior Design Manager, my main responsibilities were to help ensure we had the required resources on the project, conduct roadmap planning, work with the Product Owner to define project timelines and advocate for the users. We were fortunate to be able to have a designer on the team who was himself a Newcomer and could bring his own lived experiences to the table.

We always say that Design is a team sport: this project wouldn’t have been possible without our Lead Product Designer, Lead Content Designer, Product Owner, business partners, UX research partners, and partners in T&O.

Ideate & Co-create

The lead designer worked with business and tech partners to understand what information we must collect, could collect and should collect from an LRC (legal, risk compliance) perspective. From an experience design perspective it’s always a fine balance - we want to remove friction for the user while still protecting the bank (and the customer) from risk associated with fraud, AML (anti-money laundering) regulations and KYC (know your customer) rules.

Prototype and test

Once we had a strong understanding of the requirements, our Product Designer and Content Designer built a prototype to test with Newcomers and prospective newcomers.

The results - thanks to the generative research we had conducted - were largely positive, with some minor tweaks to copy to address specific questions and concerns that Newcomers raised.

MVP & Release

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was to build a net-new flow on existing rails. The lead designer collaborated with developers and systems architects to build the best user experience within the technical constraints.

Despite working in a rigid environment, the lead designer still made important incremental improvements to existing components:

• Country selector: Auto-completes the country’s name but also now allows the user to manually use the country selector. These functionalities existed separately but we were able to work with the dev team to combine them.

• Branch selector: An updated branch-selector component which we were able to scale to other flows.

Outcomes

The new flow allows instant account opening and funding via wire transfer (up to $75K) in India, China and 11 other countries for Newcomers who are traveling to Canada within 12 months with a valid visa.

• We reduced the time it takes to open an account from outside Canada from 2-3 days to near-instant. If they’re coming to Canada to study, a Student GIC (~$10.2K) to facilitate their expedited student visa application.

• Over 50 pre arrival partnerships formed in India, with positive feedback around best product and best experience in the market

• BAI Global Innovation Awards - Innovation in Retail Customer Experience - BMO New to Canada (Winner 2023)

• Banking Tech Awards - Best Use of Tech in Retail Banking - BMO New to Canada (Winner 2023)

• Qorus - Accenture Banking Innovation Awards - Core Offering Innovation - BMO New to Canada Winner 2023)