Multinational Private Bank (confidential)
Redesigning internet banking for a private bank's next generation of clients.
Bringing a world-class private bank's digital experience in line with its brand.
A leading multinational private bank needed its internet banking app to match its brand. The app had drifted: inconsistent navigation, clunky payment flows, no onboarding, and a design that didn't feel premium. We conducted research, audited the UX, designed high-fidelity prototypes, and delivered a design system to bring it all together.
A research-backed roadmap, approved high-fidelity UI prototypes for mobile and desktop
A design system built for long-term consistency
An online banking experience that actually feels like a premium private bank
Designing for a regulated bank means working closely with the people who know it best. The internal teams and Vega kept us honest. We brought the outside perspective.Beth Murphy
The Challenge
This bank serves some of the world's wealthiest clients. The internet banking app should reflect that. It didn't.
There was no onboarding for new users. Navigation was inconsistent across sections. The payment and beneficiary flows were unnecessarily complex, the kind of friction that generates helpdesk tickets and quiet frustration. The dashboard lacked personalisation for balances and investments. And the visual design had drifted from the bank's brand guidelines, eroding the premium feel that a private bank depends on.
Meanwhile, the client base was changing. Wealth was moving between generations, and younger clients had higher expectations for digital. The bank needed its app to evolve, not just to fix what was broken, but to position itself for where its clients were heading.
Our Approach
We worked alongside the bank's internal teams and our technology partners at Vega Technology, ensuring everything we designed was practical, compliant, and deliverable within a regulated private-banking environment.
We started with research. We reviewed existing survey data, private banker insights, and client demographics across age, loyalty, and wealth tiers. This revealed generational shifts in expectations and movement of wealth. We identified four key persona segments, benchmarked 20 to 30 competitor apps for best practice, and analysed annual helpdesk queries to pinpoint where users were getting stuck. Forms, payments, and document workflows came up repeatedly. From all of this, we set measurable UX targets: +10% monthly active users and -10% support queries.
The UX audit reviewed key areas of the app against NN/g usability heuristics, WCAG 2.2, and brand compliance. It confirmed what the data suggested: missing onboarding, inconsistent navigation, overly complex payment flows, and a dashboard that didn't give clients what they needed at a glance.
Using these insights, we created high-fidelity prototypes for mobile and desktop. Improvements included streamlined login with clear security messaging, new user onboarding, personalised dashboards, restructured navigation, and step-by-step payment flows. Every design met WCAG 2.2 AA standards and reflected the bank's premium brand identity.
Alongside the prototypes, we delivered a comprehensive design system: grids and spacing across devices, an extended colour palette, consistent iconography, interaction states for all form elements, standardised warnings and errors, and reusable components including cards, tabs, accordions, and toggles.
The Outcome
The bank received a research-backed roadmap, a set of approved high-fidelity UI prototypes for mobile and desktop, and a design system built for long-term consistency.
The prototypes demonstrated how the bank could increase digital engagement, reduce the friction that was driving helpdesk queries, and deliver an online banking experience that actually feels like a premium private bank.
Together with Vega Technology, we designed and tailored the app for the next generation of private-banking clients, grounded in real data about who those clients are and what they expect.
