Cracking the KYC Growth Code: How We Boosted KYC Conversion and Contributed to the Future of Onboarding at a European Banking Unicorn

The Client: European Union Unicorn Banking

The client is Europe’s leading mobile-first bank, based in Berlin, renowned for its rapid growth and innovative approach to banking, serving over 8 million customers across 24 markets. Founded in 2013, it quickly disrupted the traditional banking sector with its user-friendly mobile banking solutions.

The company experienced exponential growth, amassing over 7 million customers across 25 markets by 2023. Key to its success was securing substantial investments, including a $300 million Series D funding round in 2019 and an additional $470 million in Series E in 2021, boosting its valuation to $9 billion.

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The Mission: Overseeing Identity Verification Funnels

In the competitive fintech onboarding space, every percentage point in Know Your Customer (KYC) conversion matters — especially under the tight scrutiny of BaFin and eIDAS regulations.

When we joined the European Union Unicorn Bank’s Identity Verification (IDV) team in March 2025, the Senior Product Manager role had been vacant for several months. This team sits within the Legal Identity group, focused on contributing to growth targets. The IDV team’s core mission is to improve KYC conversion rates and ensure smooth, compliant onboarding across France, Spain, Italy, and the Rest of Europe (RoE) — while collaborating closely with a parallel team on alternative KYC solutions for Germany.

By the time we arrived, the team was juggling multiple high-priority initiatives:

• Modernizing KYC onboarding across Europe by rolling out a new flow by Fourthline called Drop-In KYC to major markets.
• Discovering new alternative verification methods to reduce reliance on Video KYC (video call identification) in Germany.
• Cutting drop-offs in the Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) flow (QES is a module as part of the KYC funnel to sign a document).

Without dedicated product leadership, priorities risked slipping, and dependencies across engineering, compliance, and design needed clearer alignment.

Our mission was clear: stabilize delivery, improve conversion, and explore future-proof alternatives for identity verification.

Why were we brought in?

European Union Unicorn Bank needed interim product managers who could onboard quickly, take ownership of delivery without disrupting momentum, and move forward with initiatives already in flight — while also leading product discovery for high-impact opportunities.

What the company expected:

• Deliver key rollouts in time for market launches
• Maintain and improve KYC conversion performance
• Explore and validate new verification methods in Germany

What we actually aimed for:

Beyond hitting deadlines, we focused on building clarity, trust, and sustainable delivery practices so the team would be set up for success long after our mission ended.

Our Client’s expectations:

They wanted us to “make things feel lighter” for the team — to reduce operational drag, unblock decision-making, and create the conditions where engineering, design, compliance, and business could move faster together. That meant not just managing a backlog, but proactively shaping the roadmap to balance short-term delivery with long-term impact.

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Our Main Quest: Optimize, Innovate, and Scale KYC

🚀 Hitting the Ground Running

Within the first week, we onboarded fast and built relationships with key stakeholders. We took over the Fourthline Drop-In rollout for Italy, Spain, France, and the Rest of Europe, aligned multiple teams, and moved towards launching A/B tests to measure impact.

Quick wins delivered:

• Ensured France and RoE went live as per expected timelines, matching Spain and Italy’s modernized onboarding flow.
• Introduce a clear, gradual rollout plan aligning key market stakeholders with the go-live readiness.

Initiative 1 – Migrating to a new KYC flow

The challenge: The old KYC flow lacked UX consistency and was driving up verification costs.

🏅 Our move: Contributed to shipping a new frictionless, compliant, and scalable Fourthline ****Drop-In solution across Italy, France, and RoE, harmonizing the fintech onboarding experience with:

• Improved customer experience with instant feedback on documents and selfies, preventing invalid submissions.
• Outperformed the legacy flow in overall conversion for first-time users (+2pp).
• Reduced retries (“yellow flows”), cutting KYC costs by 18% per successful verification.

Initiative 2 – Alternative KYC Discovery for Germany

The challenge: Video KYC (video call identification) dominated German onboarding but dragged down KYC conversion optimization efforts.

🏅 Our move:

• Explored and validated alternative identity verification methods — Bank Account Verification (BAV) and electronic ID (eID) as Video KYC alternatives.
  • BAV is confirming a customer’s identity by linking and verifying their existing bank account, reducing reliance on video calls.
  • eID (Electronic ID) is using the NFC-enabled German ID/ eAT card, allowing customers to prove their identity quickly through their smartphone with a 5/6 digit PIN.
• Benchmarked key providers and recommendations for scalability, keeping impact and cost in mind.
• Helped build a business case showing +2.4pp conversion lift and €135K/month cost savings potential.
• Validated customer preference for BAV and eID through user research, scoped and prepared an eID experiment to test adoption and pave the way for a scalable rollout with the chosen provider.

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Mission Achievements & Impact: Measurable Wins, Lasting Change

💡 Successfully delivered an improved identity verification flow in Spain, Italy, France, & Rest of Europe, resulting in increased conversion rate (+2pp) and cutting KYC costs by 18% per successful verification.

💡 Cost efficiency — Identified and validated German KYC alternatives with +2.4pp conversion lift and €135K/month savings potential.

💡 Onboarded the full-time Product Manager and set them up for success, making ourselves redundant.

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