Driving Investment Innovation: Expanding European Unicorn Bank’s Product Offerings Across Europe

The Client: European Unicorn Bank

The client is a leading unicorn digital bank recognized for its innovative mobile-first approach and seamless user experience. Headquartered in Europe, the bank serves millions of customers, offering cutting-edge financial products that redefine how users manage their money.

As part of its growth strategy, the Client focuses on delivering customer-centric solutions, expanding its product portfolio, and setting benchmarks in digital banking. With a strong emphasis on partnerships and regulatory compliance, the bank continuously adapts to the dynamic financial landscape.

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The Mission: Interim Product Manager

This mission was all about expanding the client’s investment product offerings and improving the user experience across European markets. With ambitious targets and evolving customer needs, the focus was on strategic market expansion, asset exploration redesign, feature discovery, and process optimization. Ultimately, driving adoption and engagement to reach the goal of 100,000 funded accounts.

On top of that, we stepped in as an interim PM to cover for an experienced Product Manager who was on an extended leave. Without someone in the role, the team would have faced a lot of challenges, such as misalignment between stakeholders, slowed execution, and a lack of clear ownership over key strategic initiatives. Given the complexity of investment products and the need for coordination across engineering, design, compliance, and marketing, keeping momentum would have been tough without a dedicated PM to drive things forward.

Taking over, we ensured the team stayed focused and the roadmap remained on track. We kept priorities clear, aligned stakeholders, and drove execution at pace while also refining processes to improve efficiency. Beyond just keeping things running, we were able to unlock opportunities, improve cross-team collaboration, and push forward key initiatives that might have otherwise stalled.

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Our Main Quest: Redefining Investment Product Offerings at the Client

Launch: Rapid Onboarding and Strategic Alignment

Upon onboarding, we quickly aligned with key stakeholders and dove into discovery efforts to map out the challenges and opportunities. Collaboration with cross-functional teams, including UX, BizOps, and vendor partners, ensured we could drive impact efficiently.

Initial Deliverables and Results

1. Gained a deep understanding of market and customer needs.
2. Built strong alignment with third-party partners such as Upvest and Xignite.
3. Defined a roadmap and rollout plan to achieve key milestones.

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Discovery of Market Opportunities and User Needs

Problem:

• Limited investment options across markets constrained user engagement.
• The existing Asset Exploration feature did not fully meet user expectations or highlight the breadth of available assets.

Market Expansion Strategy

To address the limitations in investment options, we executed a strategic expansion of the Investments product into 10 additional European markets. This required:

• Localization & Market Fit: Adapting investment offerings to regional investor preferences, such as varying appetite and availability for ETFs vs. stocks.
• Scalable Infrastructure: Enhancing backend capabilities to support multi-market operations, optimizing data pipelines and API integrations to streamline onboarding of new assets.
• Operational Readiness: Partnering with cross-functional teams, including customer support, operations, legal, and marketing, to ensure a seamless launch experience and localized user education.

Redesigning Asset Exploration

Recognizing that the existing Asset Exploration feature lacked intuitive navigation and educational support, we undertook a user-driven redesign. The process included:

• User Research & Insights: We analyzed heatmaps, conducted usability tests, and gathered direct feedback to understand pain points. Users found asset discovery cumbersome and lacked context on investment opportunities.
• Key Design Decisions:
  • Carousels & Search Enhancements: Implemented dynamic carousels tailored to user interests, allowing for a more personalized discovery experience.
  • Contextual Education: Embedded bite-sized educational content and investment insights within the exploration journey to improve financial literacy.
  • Improved Categorization: Introduced clearer asset classifications and filters, making it easier for users to explore by sectors, regions, or performance trends.
  • Visual Hierarchy: Simplified the UI, reducing cognitive load while emphasizing key investment metrics, and making asset evaluation more intuitive.
  • Enhancing Portfolio Experience: Based on user feedback, we revamped Portfolio screens to better showcase asset performance, allocation insights, and key account actions.

Results & Impact

• Market Expansion Readiness: Established a scalable framework for seamless future expansion, with Sweden among the next targeted regions.
• Improved User Experience: Increased engagement with Asset Exploration and Portfolio features, leading to higher discoverability and satisfaction.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Leveraged ongoing analytics to refine asset recommendations and optimize feature adoption.

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Expansion of Investment Instrument Offerings

Problem:

• The client’s asset catalog needed significant growth to compete with market leaders and cater to diverse user preferences.

What has been done:

• Increased the number of available stocks by ~900 and ETFs by ~1.6K.
• Streamlined partnerships with third-party partners to enhance data enrichment and ensure a smooth rollout process.

Results:

• Substantially broadened the range of investment options, making the Client a more attractive choice for investors.

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Optimization of Corporate Action Management

Problem:

• Managing corporate actions—such as dividends, stock splits, and mergers—was inefficient due to fragmented communication and a lack of scalable workflows.
• Teams often faced delays in responding to corporate actions due to the manual nature of tracking and processing notifications from third-party partners.

What has been done:

Identifying the Communication Gap

To optimize the corporate action management process, we first analyzed the existing workflow and identified key inefficiencies:

• Lack of a structured intake process: Notifications from third-party partners arrived via email, requiring manual triage and tracking, leading to potential delays.
• Inefficient task assignment: Without a clear ownership framework, response times varied, and important actions risked being overlooked.
• Workflow Optimization & Automation

To streamline operations, we implemented an automated workflow leveraging JIRA automation:

• Email-to-JIRA Ticket Automation: We integrated an automated rule that detected incoming corporate action emails from third-party partners.
• Automated Ticket Creation & Categorization: Upon receiving a notification, a JIRA ticket was automatically created, enriched with relevant details, and assigned a specific label to indicate the type of corporate action.
• Immediate Team Visibility & Actionability: This ensured that corporate actions were surfaced to the right teams in real-time, reducing response lag and eliminating manual tracking efforts.
• Preparing for Future Scalability

In parallel, we enhanced system readiness for potential integration with 3rd Party’s Notification API, which would allow for more direct and structured corporate action processing in the future. This involved:

• Mapping data fields from third-party notifications to internal systems.
• Defining the API event-handling structure to facilitate future automation.

Results & Impact

• Improved Operational Efficiency: Reduced manual overhead and response time by automating ticket creation and assignment.
• Clearer Ownership & Prioritization: Teams could now act on corporate actions promptly, with structured workflows reducing the risk of missed or delayed responses.
• Future-Ready Infrastructure: Laid the groundwork for deeper automation and seamless integration with Upvest’s Notification API.

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Execution and Achievement: Path to 100,000 Funded Accounts

Problem:

• Achieving the ambitious goal of 100,000 funded accounts required targeted initiatives and user growth strategies.

What has been done:

• Focused on increasing user sign-ups and first-time funded accounts.
• Achieved 80% of the target within the project timeline.

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Mission Achievements: Delivered Outcomes

💡 Market Expansion: Successfully launched the Investments product in 10 European markets, maintaining regulatory compliance and laying the groundwork for further geographic expansion.

💡 Enhanced User Experience: Redesigned the Asset Exploration feature, introducing carousels, search functionality, and educational content, which significantly improved user satisfaction.

💡 Asset Growth: Expanded the catalog of available investment instruments, adding ~900 stocks and ~1.6K ETFs, enabling users to access a broader range of options.

💡 Partnership and Process Optimization: Strengthened collaborations with key third-party partners, optimizing corporate action processes and aligning rollout plans.

💡 User Adoption and Engagement: Reached 80% of the target for funded accounts, demonstrating tangible progress toward strategic growth goals.

This mission exemplifies how the Client’s commitment to innovation and strategic execution continues to redefine digital banking experiences across Europe.

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