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. Our goal was to create a data-driven mobile banking experience that helps customers unleash their full financial potential. Over the 2-year building journey, our teams collaborated with client teams in an agile model to craft a full-service banking ecosystem. The platform is powered by machine learning and powerful algorithms to deliver a proactive experience that evolves with every interaction. By understanding and learning individual financial habits, ‘next’ can predict future states and deliver a customized experience that guides customers to make better daily financial decisions. Because the brand would live primarily behind interfaces, we designed an identity that can be touched and experienced, that is responsive and functional. The logo itself becomes a data-informed instant visualization of the customer’s financial health, helping to track progress against goals. Every user journey happens through the integration of technology, data intelligence, and design. Putting data at the center of every design decision was the only way to realize the intimate experience at the core of our vision.

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.

First and foremost, it’s a noble mission to encourage, inspire, and enable young people—a demanding and entrepreneurial generation of digital natives—to progress in life. You would also be rewarding the vision and the immense effort required for a big traditional company (in a stodgy industry) to reinvent itself and usher in a new wave of services designed for the digital age. Our collaboration demonstrates how data can drive the design of a company’s future, capturing value with scale.

We merged technology, data intelligence, and design to implement 3 strategies:

1. Innovative business model: retention is functional. By delivering value beyond transactions, ‘next’ ensures that customers will give value back to the business by using ‘next’ more and managing their financial life within ‘next’ over the long term. Even the selling of traditional financial products is data driven and contextual, so it’s perceived as just another service: ‘next’ enables customers to buy what they need, when they need it.

2. Embedded financial education: ‘next’ uses data to learn about customers’ 30-day financial cycles and proactively guide them to stick to their budget and reach their goals.

3. Responsive branding: the brand is the interface, informed by data. The brand itself becomes a simple and instant representation of how customers are doing compared to their plans and goals. Algorithms were designed to understand and learn individual financial habits, to predict future states, and to deliver a customized experience that guides customers to make better daily financial decisions.

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.