Onboarding that feels like a handshake

The challenge

Customers wanted an account. The app asked them to fill in a tax return.

The bank had invested heavily in its mobile app, yet more than half of new customers abandoned account opening before the end. The flow had grown one regulation at a time: twelve screens, thirty-one fields, two identity checks and a document upload that failed quietly on older phones.

Branch staff had started printing the paper form again, which told leadership everything. The brief was simple and hard: keep every compliance check, remove every moment of doubt.

• Fifty-four per cent of applicants dropped out before submitting
• Thirty-one fields, eleven of them asked twice in different words
• No way to pause and come back without starting again

Our approach

Treat onboarding as a conversation, and let the bank do the heavy lifting.

Listening before designing

We sat with forty applicants in branches and at home, and watched where their thumbs hesitated. The pattern was clear. People did not mind giving information; they minded not knowing why it was needed or how long it would take.

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Four steps, one promise each

We rebuilt the flow around four steps: who you are, where you live, how you will use the account and a final check. Each step opens with one sentence on why it matters. Address and employer details are filled from data the bank already holds, and the identity scan runs in the background while the customer carries on.

Calm by design

A single progress ring replaces the old step counter. Every screen has one primary button. Errors explain what to do next in plain words, and the flow saves itself after every field, so a customer interrupted by a train arriving can pick up exactly where they left off.

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The outcome

Fewer screens, fewer calls, and a first impression worthy of the bank.

Completed sign-ups rose by thirty-seven per cent in the first full quarter. Median time to open an account fell from fourteen minutes to under five, and calls to the contact centre about onboarding nearly halved. The compliance team signed off every step first time, because every check they needed was still there, only better explained.

It finally feels like opening an account with a person, not filling in a form for a machine.

The four-step pattern now forms the base of the bank’s loan and savings journeys, built from the same components and the same plain-spoken copy.