Success Story Financial Services

Us-based Bank Becomes One-stop-shop For Cds

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This institution has offered banking and financial services to individuals and corporate clients in the U.S. for over two decades.

The U.S.-based bank focuses on digitally driven community banking services. It is one of the few banks in the U.S. with a cloud-based open Application Programming Interfaces (API) core banking system.

Leveraging its human-first digital approach, Apexon created a platform to connect banks that offer CDs with the community of CD users by developing a responsive one-stop centralized application that serves all their CD-related needs. While it gave individuals an opportunity to select the right CD after comparing CD details of more than 1,000 banks, the client bank could create a competitive positioning in the community for its services.

Apexon has been instrumental in helping the organization enhance the digital experience of its loyal customers while also helping the bank expand its reach and enhance its brand value.

Over 20-year-old FDIC-certified bank
One of the largest banks in the Northwest U.S.
Over $750 million in assets

The customer journey

Discovery and Design(4 Weeks)

Legacy application and user experience reviewed to discover gaps for improvement. Separate personas created subscribers, financial institutions, and administrators to address their unique needs

Web Application Development (8 Weeks)

A centralized web application developed to serve as a single destination for all information related to CDs

Mobile Application Development (6 Weeks)

Android and iOS applications developed for fast and easy access to CD information and recommendations

Integrations (4 Weeks)

Bauer rating integration reviews of 8,000 banks providing CDs in the U.S.

User Acceptance Testing (4 Weeks)

Collaborated with the product manager and business users to test and refine the CD Valet application

the Results

Key Outcomes

Created a one-stop destination for users to access CD offers and rates across 30+ states, 1,000+ banks, and CD offers of 10,000+ (continuously growing with more banks being onboarded)

Attracted huge subscriber base, opening opportunities to upsell and cross-sell banking and financial services

Attracted 10k+ users during the first few weeks of launch Growing month on month, reached 40k+ in 3 months

The challenge

ENHANCE THE USER EXPERIENCE ACROSS MULTIPLE PERSONAS

Certificates of Deposits (CDs) are popular in the U.S. market. They are safe, yield higher interest rates, and provide long-term stability. However, there are a wide variety of CDs available in the market from which subscribers can choose based on their individual needs and circumstances. It can all be overwhelming for customers, slowing the process and inhibiting CD deposits.

The bank saw an opportunity to address a big market need by helping its customers more easily understand and find the right CDs to support their personal financial goals. For this, it developed and launched a pilot web application that allowed users to access all information related to CDs in the U.S. and perform interest rate calculations. The initial pilot was limited to “family and friends,” a close community of bank employees, relatives, and associates.

Pilot users found the application useful in terms of understanding and finding CDs, but there were consistent concerns about its performance and user-friendliness. Feedback centered on the application’s poor look and feel. The UX also seemed to conflict with the latest industry best practices. Pilot users also cited limited comparison data and busy advertisements, which confused the user interface.

Specific comments included:

Concern was difficulty in comparing CD rates of return, and an unresponsive UI

Poor functionality, difficulty comparing CD rates of return, and an unresponsive UI

Limited filtering which made it difficult to choose different types of institutions

Unresponsive rates pages

The need for users to adjust their view settings anytime they changed devices

Poor use of color and design

The need for time-consuming manual data entry

A limited number of banks overall was a concern

A limited number of banks overall, and a particular lack of local banks

Poor functionality in key features such as the interest calculator and CD rate comparison

The pilot application was also missing key functionality such as term options, market rate comparisons, and bank ratings. Moreover, the application was only sometimes updated with the latest CDs as it did not effectively account for the needs of institutional users updating CD information.

The bank approached Apexon based on its extensive banking experience and strong reputation in user experience design. It also needed a technology services partner that could manage the complexities in application development. The bank needed to find a way to keep the applications updated on the latest interest rates and wanted to add more functionality for admin and financial institution users. The aim was to develop a one-stop destination to meet all the information needs of prospective CD customers.

The Solution

A ONE-STOP, DIGITAL DESTINATION FOR CD SHOPPING

Apexon worked with the client to address the shortcomings in the CD application and ready it for production release. The approach was to create a web and mobile-based CD platform application (Android and iOS). Apexon’s engagement involved functionality for different user personas along with the data integration and technology stack to support it.

PROCESS – Apexon used Agile methodology for application development with SCRUM to guide the team structure and iterations as teams worked in sprints.

Multiple User Personas

Apexon identified three major user personas – subscribers, financial institutions, and client-bank administrators – and developed specific functionality and features for each:

For Subscribers:

Display of CD information from banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions including APY, rating, terms, and min/max balances

The ability to save information related to subscribed CDs and calculate earnings and interest rates

Submission of CDs not found on the application to be approved or rejected for addition to the platform by a client-bank administrator

New filters to narrow search queries for specific banks, terms, APY ranges, and investment amounts

User CD portfolios and watchlists

Optional push notifications such as CD Portfolio alerts, CD maturity, and CD rate alerts for a specific APY range and term

A break-fee calculator to helps users determine if/when to break existing CDs and enroll in new ones that will be more profitable

Segregation of CD information by state or internet only

For financial institutions, the CD valet application provided functionalities to:

Allow users from the financial institutions to:

Add CD rates to the CDs listed in the application
Add new CDs that are not already listed on the application
Highlight promotions and special rates

Populate CDs from over 50 U.S. financial institutions and continues to automatically add data monthly

For administrators (client-bank employees), the application provided features to:

Access and validate the information submitted by financial institutions and approve if they are found correct

Manage application configuration settings, users, and subscribers

Leverage Agile development model to develop new features in multiple iterations

Data Integration

Apexon also developed a crawler program to scrape CD interest rate data from 20 bank websites and update them in the application automatically so that subscribers had an accurate view.

The Apexon team also integrated the CD application with Bauer financials, an entity that provides ratings and reviews of banks, credit unions, and financial institutions trusted by users in the U.S. These ratings and reviews are pulled from banking portals through XML and displayed with respective CD listings on the application for the users to view.

Technology Stack

Apexon used the latest platforms and tools to power the CD valet application with the following components:

Azure as the cloud service provider

Cosmo DB from Azure for database

NodeJS with expressJS for managing backend services

ReactJS and NextJS for managing frontend services of the web portal

React native to manage front-end for mobile applications

A pre-built API is used for configuring and managing APIs centrally. The configurator provides functionalities like API retry mechanism, refresh token mechanism, and API mapping for managing multiple backends. Third party integration on the portal was managed with NodeJS for web scrapping provision of CD data for 50+ banks. For URL based integration and API based integration, KASASA and EMMA features were used.

Results

Apexon helped the bank leapfrog its competition by creating a one-stop destination for users to access current CD offers and rates from thousands of banks across the U.S. As a result, it now attracts a huge new subscriber base, opening profitable opportunities for upselling and cross-selling its banking and financial services while enhancing its brand value.

Success Story Financial Services Us-based Bank Becomes One-stop-shop For Cds