Design Thinking in Banking Sector

Design Thinking became the need of the hour for the Banking sector which saw a tremendous upheaval in the way they work due to COVID as much or even more then many other sectors.

People were no longer wanting to visit the branches or even the ATM centres to get their work done. This change in requirement had to be met via changes which needed to be made to the entire infrastructure of the Branches and the Banking system. This drove the Banking sector to the Design board.

Initially the DT team had to practice Empathy while they listened to what the customers wanted and what the banking client wanted so that they could thoroughly understand the need from both sides. There were certain reasons where the customers were required to be at the Branch by the Bank and certain reasons why customers were sceptical to visit branches

The DT team had to now go to their Charter board to Define the changes required and accommodate all the needs before they moved on to actually creating a story board. 

Multiple iterations of Ideation were now set in motion while deciding how to move which functions to complete online transactions and which to keep at branch. Apart from designing the methodology and structure of the way the transactions had to happen the Actual Bank Branch had to remodelled keeping social distancing in mind. This had to be built in such a way to minimize the cost involved in remodelling as well as the Banks were already in a financial crisis.

Initial Prototypes of cardboard designed branches and PowerPoint driven applications were created to establish how Digitization of the Banking sector was to be done and then approval had to be sought out from both customers and the Banking client before the same was Tested as a Pilot in one of the Branches and then slowly moved to further implementation.

This is not an actual scenario of a change brought about at any particular Bank but the story of a scenario that would play out as the Banks moved to the Design Thinking table as imagined by the author.

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