Our client is an industry-leading, fully digital bank revolutionizing the banking experience in Brazil. Founded in 2018, the institution aims to provide comprehensive financial services entirely online.
Similar to digital payment pioneers like Nubank and Banco Inter, our client operates without physical branches, offering a seamless digital experience through its Android and iPhone (iOS) apps. Users can register via virtual chat, enabling them to access a range of services including current accounts, payment accounts, credit cards, loans, investments and more.
The bank's portfolio encompasses over 90 products, catering to the diverse needs of its 30 million customers in Brazil, including individuals and various types of legal entities. By November 2023, the bank achieved breakeven, marking its first monthly profit milestone.
Transforming the banking experience
In a market traditionally dominated by big banks, this bank emerges as a game-changer, aiming to transform the banking experience for all. Founded with the vision of attracting traditional account holders and small to medium-sized enterprises, they bring a fresh approach to digital banking.
The main focus of its strategy has several key focuses:
Crafting a seamless and customer-centric journey.
Ditching physical branches for autonomous agents who serve as its sales force.
Utilizing cloud-based systems to ensure operational agility and efficiency.
Offering credit at rates well below market average by partnering with PayGo, a payment solutions provider.
Integrating top solutions via APIs and introducing a customer-centric rewards program.
The client’s innovative approach to banking promises to democratize financial services, making them accessible and rewarding for all.
Pioneering rapid bank building
Building a bank from scratch in less than a year was a monumental challenge. To accomplish this feat, the bank hired a team of financial experts from across Brazil and chose Thoughtworks to provide technical excellence and engineering best practices to help build its culture and ways of working.
Thoughtworks guided the bank in establishing its ethos and operational processes from the ground up. Despite starting with no lines of code or established procedures, we employed product innovation to rapidly build all customer interfaces within the first five months.
Our team worked with several banking solutions providers—Symply, Conductor, Matera, and FitBank—to integrate core services and products. Our main focus was developing custom software, including a native mobile application, and a microservices platform. These were specifically designed to accommodate extensive external integrations for the mobile app, as all core banking capabilities came from an external vendor.
Transformation of a concept into a fully operational financial powerhouse
Our projects were centered around core banking elements such as bank accounts, debit and credit card applications and seamless digital onboarding. These initiatives encompassed both front and back-end development, with intricate APIs integrating with core banking systems, payment processors and other essential banking software.
The milestone of opening the first customer bank account happened just seven months into our partnership, marking the beginning of a groundbreaking journey. To put this achievement into perspective, a similar endeavor undertaken by a seasoned banking executive previously took three years to achieve. By the time we completed the project, 1.6 million accounts were opened and 250,000 credit cards issued.
Our innovative approach to banking onboarding garnered widespread acclaim, earning the bank the prestigious title of Best Onboarding Award for a digital bank in Brazil. Leveraging our expertise, we facilitated the onboarding of one million clients within a record-breaking six months, significantly contributing to the bank's rapid path to financial viability.
Being with you every day has been a wonderful experience. You have been colleagues, professionals, teachers, and unique friends. You brought lightness to our daily lives, shared your beautiful and authentic culture to help us build our own. Thank you to each and every one of you. Moving forward, our challenge will be to perpetuate what we have built together.
