Lloyds Bank Wholesale Platform Strategy

Facing competition from both single– and multi-dealer platforms, the commercial arm of a high street bank wanted to validate the direction of their wholesale banking platform for SMEs. I was asked to identify tactical priorities for the near term and gather insights to guide strategic planning.

I identified key areas for investigation through a usability heuristic review of the application, interviews with stakeholders, and a review of prior research. I then prepared an agenda for a workshop with senior decision-makers at some of the bank’s most important clients.

Drawing on feedback from the workshop, I created preliminary mental models for the application’s main functional areas to help us understand how users thought about the problem space. These helped us identify the activities most important to users, which allowed us to validate and prioritise issues identified in the heuristic review. These yielded strategic opportunities and insights to guide future development.

We presented our insights to the global managing director of sales and head of e-commerce, both of whom were impressed with the quality and depth of insights we achieved in the limited time available. As a result, they invited us to pitch for a project to define the overall strategic direction of the bank’s digital offering for SMEs.