User experience plays a critical role in the fintech sector because financial services are often complex, highly regulated, and trust-dependent. Customers expect digital banking, payment, investment, and insurance platforms to be simple, secure, and intuitive. Poor experiences can lead to frustration, abandonment, and loss of trust. Effective UX design helps fintech companies simplify complex financial processes while maintaining compliance and security. By reducing cognitive effort and improving transparency, organizations can create experiences that encourage customer engagement, confidence, and long-term loyalty.
Fintech Design Summit 2018: 5 takeaways
Our key takeaways from this flagship Fintech Design Summit.
If you were struggling to get buy-in from product owners, designers, or someone who didn’t understand the benefit of research, the Fintech Design Summit was a great event to persuade them.
The Fintech Design Summit, hosted by Tech Circus, was a collection of talks around the latest fintech trends and topics, from designers to product teams. The conference attracted top thought leaders, engaging speakers, and relevant topics. If you needed to help stakeholders understand how important research is, and how all your competitors are probably maximising their products through research this was a great event for that. Here are our 5 key takeaways from the Fintech Design Summit:
1. Deploy user research to improve and learn, not just to check homework
Testing designs with potential users is now a given for major financial organisations, all the major banks are doing it. Several speakers declared research as ‘commonplace’ and that all the big banks were doing research as part of their review processes.
Phil Morton, Head of Strategy at Foolproof, raised the point that organisations need to do more than test prototypes to stand out from competitors. Organisations need to understand their customers to identify areas for improvement, and constantly learn and iterate.
Tom Crossman, VP of Product at Habito, exemplified this in his case study on Habito. Habito conducted initial research to identify opportunities. Now that they have a live product, they track customer feedback and conduct A/B testing to learn and iterate. A combination of methodologies is key to going beyond user testing.
2. Gain a deep understanding of the business
A thorough understanding of the business is useful when designing systems for any industry, but fintechs have particularly complex business models. There are strict security and legal requirements that do not affect other sectors. For instance, the new GDPR legislation requires banks to implement two factor authentication (2FA). How can organisations offer a good customer experience while meeting security requirements?
Phil Bonhard, Customer Experience Lead at Lloyds, stressed that biometrics and a redesigned log in process that anticipates customers’ needs can make a difference. But that’s no easy feat.
Gavin Holland, Design Manager at Capital One, recommended involving a diverse group of stakeholders in the design process, from engineers to customer service representatives. Harnessing the knowledge of different people in an organisation is crucial to gaining a deeper understanding of a business and being able to design complex solutions.
3. Embrace the power of data
Financial transactions generate a massive amount of data, but traditional banks aren’t currently leveraging it. Anne Boden, CEO and Founder of Starling Bank, described how the business model of banks is built on percentages, fees, and upsells. In contrast, many fintechs have data at their core. Starling analyses every transaction and uses algorithms to generate product suggestions that are relevant to customers.
Open Banking has changed the way traditional banks operate, by requiring them to open up customers’ data through secure APIs. Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and Co-Founder of True Layer, described how, at the customer's request, banks have to share the data they hold with authorised third parties. This creates opportunities to provide new services, like account aggregation or spending insights, which are currently only offered by challenger banks like Starling or Monzo.
4. Understand how customers feel to deliver the best possible experience
The speakers highlighted that platforms, products, and organisations do not exist in a vacuum: customers will approach them with their own expectations, perceptions, concerns and fears.
Elisabeth Grothe-Møller, Head of Design of bitcoin platform wemovecoins.com, reminded us that people tend to distrust financial companies, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis. Phil Morton shared a piece of insight that he’s heard countless times during research: that customers believe banks are all the same.
Mike Giepert, Creative Director of Wealthsimple, illustrated with a personal anecdote how money can be an extremely emotional experience for those who don’t have a lot of it.
When it comes to financial products, understanding the journeys is not enough: we need to investigate how people will feel when they approach them at different points, and design with that in mind.
5. You'll make mistakes, the key is how you handle them
People and companies fail often. According to Åste Einn, CDO and Co-Founder of the Norwegian startup Payr, we can use mistakes to our advantage. In one of the most personal and engaging talks of the summit, Einn argued that we need to design products with failure in mind: people use our systems, and people are prone to error. A company, built and managed by humans, will also fail often.
In the case of fintechs, which deal with people’s money, failures can generate a great deal of stress among customers. Companies can reduce the risk of failure by testing and failing often. And of course, by handling mistakes quickly and effectively. Einn personally called some Payr customers to understand the problems they were experiencing shortly after they launched their app. Tracking customers’ feedback and acting upon it is key for companies to learn and grow.
Phil Morton’s talk “Bridging the brand-experience gap” was written up and shared on Medium and his slides can be found on Slideshare.
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Fintech Design - FAQs
Fintech organizations must balance innovation, security, regulation, and usability. Customers expect seamless digital experiences, but companies must also comply with legal requirements and protect sensitive financial data. This creates unique design challenges that require careful consideration. Additionally, financial products often involve unfamiliar terminology and complex workflows. UX teams must translate technical information into experiences that are understandable and accessible to a wide range of users. Successful fintech design focuses on clarity, transparency, and trust while meeting business and regulatory objectives.
Trust is one of the most important factors in financial services. Customers share highly sensitive information and depend on providers to manage critical aspects of their financial lives. Design decisions can significantly influence perceptions of credibility, security, and reliability. Clear communication, intuitive interfaces, transparent policies, and consistent experiences all contribute to building trust. Organizations that prioritize trust-centered design are more likely to strengthen customer relationships and encourage continued use of their products and services.
Customer research helps fintech companies understand how people manage money, make financial decisions, and interact with digital services. Research uncovers pain points, unmet needs, and behavioral patterns that can inspire new products and improvements. By involving customers throughout the design process, organizations can ensure that innovations address real challenges rather than assumptions. This approach reduces risk and increases the likelihood of successful adoption. Research-driven innovation is especially important in fintech, where trust and usability directly influence customer outcomes.
Financial services often involve complicated concepts, contracts, and transactions. Simplifying these experiences helps customers make informed decisions and reduces the likelihood of confusion or errors. Simplicity improves accessibility and makes financial tools more approachable for diverse audiences. Good design does not remove complexity from the underlying system but manages it in a way that feels intuitive to customers. Clear navigation, plain language, visual hierarchy, and streamlined workflows can significantly improve the overall user experience.
One of the key lessons from the summit is that customer experience and trust are becoming major competitive differentiators within financial services. Organizations that understand customer needs and invest in human-centered design are better positioned to succeed in rapidly evolving markets. The event highlighted the importance of combining technological innovation with customer understanding, ensuring that digital financial services remain secure, accessible, and easy to use. Ultimately, successful fintech experiences are built around clarity, confidence, and customer value.