Ongoing Financial Customer Experience Research

The challenge

Over the last decade, the UK banking market has seen the influx of several challenger banks offering a digital-first experience to customers. At the start of 2025, 40% of UK adults were using a digital-only bank account, up from just 24% in 2023, with this figure continuing to rise.

We have been excited to work closely with one of these banks over the past 3 years, supporting their UX Research team with better understanding their target customers, whilst shaping future products and services.

What we did

We’ve carried out a range of UX research spanning several methodologies, including diary studies, in-depth interviews, usability testing, card sorts, and co-design activities. Speaking to different customer groups, we have uncovered insights for a number of different financial products and services.

Recent research has explored:

• the attitudes, behaviours, and critical user needs of vulnerable customers,
• the comprehension of warnings in payment journeys, and
• navigation to and through the account opening flow for a new account type.

Benefits

We enjoy building lasting relationships with our clients, that bring us closer to the problems we’re trying to solve and make us feel part of the team. We’ve also found several other benefits to our ongoing work:

1. Increased understanding: Repeat projects for a client mean more time for us to learn our way around their products. A good understanding of the current user experience, research practices, and long-term strategy ultimately allows us to deliver greater value back to the business. For example, we can better align our insights to the customer experience framework and guidelines, reinforce consistent themes, and outline realistic next steps.
2. Open communication: Regular emails and Zoom catch-ups have become part and parcel of our work, whether it’s fine-tuning recruitment criteria or scoping future projects. We love getting involved in ideation sessions, hearing the views of stakeholders, and answering questions about insights. Project debriefs and reports are also shared widely to advocate for research and build empathy with customers through thought-provoking stories and soundbites.
3. Consistency: We’ve had consistent researchers working with the client from the beginning, allowing us to build both a good understanding of their working practices, and positive relationship with the team. With each round of research we’re able to fine-tune our deliverables to meet internal requirements, ensuring insights are concise, engaging and actionable.