Svea Bank

Launching Sweden's first online bank dedicated to businesses

Svea Ekonomi had just acquired a small, niche bank. While this was a strategic business move, it came with a significant product challenge: the newly acquired online banking platform was a frustrating and outdated user experience.

We realized there was a huge gap in the market: no bank in Sweden was truly dedicated to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. We built a new online bank from scratch, with a fully automated onboarding experience that would let business owners open an account in minutes, not days. This was a chance to create a new category leader.

As Lead Art director, I was responsible for the overall visual design, from initial research and concept development to final UI and UX. I also translated the new brand guidelines into a design system for Sveas digital services. I worked closely with a service designer, UX writers, product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to translate our ambitious vision into a simple, intuitive, and beautiful banking experience.

Svea Ekonomi had just acquired a small, niche bank. While this was a strategic business move, it came with a significant product challenge: the newly acquired online banking platform was a frustrating and outdated user experience.

We realized there was a huge gap in the market: no bank in Sweden was truly dedicated to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. We built a new online bank from scratch, with a fully automated onboarding experience that would let business owners open an account in minutes, not days. This was a chance to create a new category leader.

As Lead Art director, I was responsible for the overall visual design, from initial research and concept development to final UI and UX. I also translated the new brand guidelines into a design system for Sveas digital services. I worked closely with other designers, product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to translate our ambitious vision into a simple, intuitive, and beautiful banking experience.

CLIENT
Svea Ekonomi

YEAR
2018–2020

ROLE
Art Direction / Product design / UX / Brand / Concept

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Understanding the users

To really understand the pain points of SME owners, we conducted interviews with more than 15 entrepreneurs. The key insight was that they felt ignored by the traditional larger banks. It was a hassle just to get a company up and running. The owners were often buried in paperwork and wasted alot of time on simple admin tasks.

We mapped out the entire customer journey, from initial awareness to becoming a an active user. A large focus was on the onboarding flow. We designed and prototyped many variations to find the simplest and most efficient way to get a business up and running in Sweden.

I created interactive prototypes of all our solutions in InVision and these were used both for usability testing and for stakeholder discussions. The business owners had great feedback to give and they also validate many of our different hypothesis.

A responsive Design System built for Svea

Designing a bank with a friendly touch

Every part of the user experience was conceptualized, tested, iterated on and hand crafted down to pixel perfection. From the overall brand and visuals down to micro copy with a personal and friendly tone. In close collaboration with development teams and stakeholders new features were designed and developed in a very fast pace.

Built as a responsive web application the bank has basic functionalities that fits our user needs such as showing business and savings accounts, viewing debit and credit cards, making regular payments, international payments and transfers along with handling loans, autogiro, Swish and e-faktura.

Simplifying a complex onboarding

Our biggest challenge was the onboarding, both when it came to looking up an existing business or registrering a new one. It required us to get a deep understanding for the process of the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket) and the Tax Agency (Skatteverket). We could automate all the steps required for existing businesses but some steps for registering a new company still needed to be handled manually by our banking team.

Our goal was either way to design an experience that felt automatic and took care of all the hard work for the user. We designed the complete flow with this in mind and worked hard with expectation management. A progressbar guided the user and a helpful sidebar walked them through each step of the process. For the parts that took a bit longer, the design was very clear and honest, telling the user exactly what was happening and when it would be done.

This was a huge step forward. Today, an existing business can join the bank in under seven minutes. A brand new business can do it all online in a couple of days, skipping the weeks of paperwork they faced before. We turned a difficult process into a fast and friendly experience.

Our biggest challenge was the onboarding. It required us to get a deep understanding for the process of the Swedish Companies Registration Office (Bolagsverket) and the Tax Agency (Skatteverket). We could automate all the steps required for existing businesses but some steps for registering a new company still needed to be handled manually by our banking team.

Our goal was either way to design an experience that felt automatic and took care of all the hard work for the user. We designed the complete flow with this in mind and worked hard with expectation management. A progressbar guided the user and a helpful sidebar walked them through each step of the process. For the parts that took a bit longer, the design was very clear and honest, telling the user exactly what was happening and when it would be done.

This was a huge step forward. Today, an existing business can join the bank in under seven minutes. A brand new business can do it all online in a couple of days, skipping the weeks of paperwork they faced before. We turned a difficult process into a fast and friendly experience.

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Next Project — Svea Ekonomi website

Mattias Kristensson

Senior Product & Brand Designer

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