While consumers migrate to mobile-only experiences in everything they do, the banking industry has lagged behind. The opportunity was to create an entirely new mobile-only bank that empowers millennials and seamlessly integrates into their lifestyles. We did this by reimagining the banking experience for the digital age, putting design at the core of every decision, and using the newest technology to enable a proactive relationship and innovative features that have never been delivered by any competitor. Designed around the “Make It Happen” brand idea, ‘next’ offers a mobile banking experience that helps customers do more with their money and achieve more in their lives. It’s a full banking service that’s customer centric, using data and context to inform better individual financial decisions.

Available for iOS and Android, ‘next’ is Bradesco’s new financial platform offering products, services, smart budgeting tools, customized graphics, and personalized experiences targeted to young customers under the “Make It Happen” concept. Through the ‘next’ apps, users track their financial progress against their budget and goals and consume the robust Core Banking solutions offered by Bradesco (Bradesco “as a service” concept). The ‘next’ platform, called Core Digital, was built exclusively to meet its specific and additional services needed. The Core Digital was fully built from square one using a service-oriented model, APIs, and open banking concepts. It is a sophisticated analytics platform with high real-time processing capacity, with its own algorithms and internal innovations in security and predictive analytics, and is focused on a new concept of service delivery that transcends the role that banks have provided until today. The Core Digital facilitates user journeys for consuming financial products from Bradesco or any other partner (financial or otherwise). This is due to the large set of APIs developed.

The ‘next’ platform is a great success. Acquisition: 1.3mm downloads; 94% within target (high-income millennials); 75% new to Bradesco; 557,000 are in the approval phase (increasing conversion at a fast pace); 129,000 active clients (growing 40% per month). Engagement: 1.7mm transactions in March 2018 (growing 70% per month—75% faster than customer base); 20 monthly transactions per customer (doubled in Q1 2018); only 2% of inactivity (market average is 24%); 30% of active customers invested through “objectives” (99% growth in Q1 2018); 34% of the credit offered is being used (above market average); 45% of customers are already recurrent users of 63 partners’ exclusive offers (including offers from Uber, Apple, iFood, Airbnb, Cinemark, and Xbox). Bradesco customers who also create a ‘next’ account become 30% more profitable on our platform.

Launching a new bank is a large business transformation project, involving substantial changes to core infrastructure and capabilities. With its groundbreaking ‘next’ platform, Bradesco is setting the direction for the rest of the bank’s properties and IT initiatives, and ultimately demonstrating how mobile, new software development practices, and experience-centered approaches can be used to take the business forward. In Bradesco’s long-term program to innovate in financial services, ‘next’ is the tip of the iceberg. Moreover, ‘next’ achieves an innovative mission in this segment: to encourage, inspire, and enable young people—a demanding and entrepreneurial generation of digital natives—to progress in life.

Business plan: April 2015

MVP definition: June 2015

Patent registrations: from June 2015 to June 2016

Design journeys and MVP: from August 2015 to January 2016

Development: from January 2016 to May 2017

Internal beta tests: May 2017

App stores launch: June 2017

Stabilization of the platform: from June 2017 to September 2017

Soft launch campaign: September 2017

Official launch: October 2017

Banking is the only category of services that touches and influences a consumer’s entire life. In Brazil, digital natives—a high-potential group that accounts for 30% of the economically active population—see banking as a necessary evil and a reactive service. In fact, 71% of millennials would rather go to a dentist than to a bank. Bradesco—one of the largest banks in Brazil, with more than 75 million customers—wanted to increase its penetration into this market and was willing to embrace an entirely new proposition, an innovative business model, and a reimagined branding and design process.