Jenius Bank · SMBC
Defining a new digital bank
Leadership had bet Jenius Bank's launch on "high earners, not rich yet" segments and "personalized insights" without clear definitions. I led the discovery that showed family structure and mindsets drove financial needs, then took the team from those needs to two tested MVP features.
This case study is about the research. For how I built and led the team, see Building a research team from zero →
- Lead researcher
- 1 year
- Mixed methods
- Discovery to MVP
At a glance
From a hunch to a tested MVP
- Target
Refined from "high earners, not rich yet" to personas framed around mindsets and family structure.
- Product
The MVP concept refocused on monitoring, budgeting and savings: the foundation users needed before personalized insights.
- Features
“Jenius View” and “Money Flow” were chosen from thirteen concepts by survey value scores, then refined through usability testing.
- Pivot
Clips and verbatims convinced product leadership to redesign “Money Flow,” which drastically improved its usability and reception.
The challenge
A promise of financial wellness, undefined
My role
SMBC launched Jenius Bank as its entry into U.S. consumer banking: a digital bank with financial-wellness tools, built inside a large, regulated enterprise. The ethos was to empower customers by embedding personalized insights into everyday banking, but no one had defined what that meant in practice.
As Director of Research and Innovation, I owned the customer foundation from the beginning: defining the ideal customer profile and product differentiation, and guiding the concept from discovery through usability testing, in partnership with product, design and marketing.
CX leadership team
- Drew HopkinsDirector, Research & Innovation
- Tracey DunlapHead of CX
- Dean ValentinDesign Director
Methods
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Survey
- Workshops
- Preference testing
- Usability testing
The process
From assumption to MVP
Select a stage to see what I did and what changed because of it.
01 · Interviews and focus groups
Income didn't predict needs. Family structure and mindsets did.
Leadership had aligned on a "high earners, not rich yet" (HENRY) customer, but the strategy rested on intuition. I led two rounds of 10 interviews, inside and outside the HENRY segment, then four focus groups of 8: one set with financial-tool users, one with people who use goal-setting apps outside finance.
Financial goals varied widely regardless of income. Some people were overwhelmed and needed foundational support; others wanted to optimize, or to align their money with their identity and long-term goals. Family structure and mindsets predicted needs far better than income. People with more mature families described deep financial stress, household complexity and anxiety about the future.
What changed
- New sub-segments within the HENRY cohort, defined by family structure and the behaviors and mindsets that came with it.
02 · Needs model and survey
Insights only help once the basics are covered
I synthesized discovery into a hierarchy of needs. Personalized insights could be useful, but they depended on a foundation of reliable monitoring and budgeting. I then sized each need across personas in a survey of more than 1,000 people, looking at income, age and household. Select a level to explore it.
Part of the MVP focus.
What the survey showed
- Needs were evenly distributed across income levels.
- By age and household, the picture changed: the most financially stressed participants were much older than expected.
- People with mature families needed basic monitoring and budgeting more than personalized insights.
What changed
- With product and marketing, I refined the target to mid-to-high income families aged 35 to 55.
- The concept focused on monitoring, budgeting and savings for this group: a foundation that could grow into higher-order goals with the customer base.
03 · Cross-functional workshops
From abstract needs to testable concepts
I ran a series of cross-functional workshops with product teams. We broke each need into five or six "How might we" opportunities, then scored them on MVP feasibility, brand fit, differentiation and customer impact. The top two in each need went forward to ideation.
In ideation sessions we used Crazy 8s and round-robin refinement: everyone sketched alone, picked their best ideas, then shared and rated them as a group. We journey-mapped the strongest ideas to find blind spots, and explored naming and component placement to push the concepts further.
What changed
- Teams moved from abstract needs to concepts grounded in customer behavior and strategic differentiation.
04 · Concept survey
Thirteen concepts, two winners
We turned the strongest ideas into thirteen MVP-worthy wireframes and tested appetite in a large-scale survey. Participants rated each concept's value, suggested improvements, and ranked them all at the end.
That showed the highest-value opportunities and improved the early ideas. Given time and resources, the team moved forward with two features that would define the MVP:
The MVP
- “Jenius View”: one snapshot of a customer's finances, including net worth, credit score, and aggregated assets and liabilities.
- “Money Flow”: upcoming bills and expected balances, projected from past behavior.
“Jenius View” was predicated on account aggregation and credit score, two of the highest-scoring concepts. “Money Flow” was predicated on budgets and trends, the other two.
05 · Usability testing
One feature clicked. The other needed a pivot.
The pivot
Before
“Money Flow”
Built around a list of upcoming transactions, which users confused with their regular transaction history.
After
“Forecast”
Renamed, with upcoming transactions simplified into a calendar view, with the bills and subscriptions monitors users valued most given visual priority.
The redesign drastically improved usability, reception and overall performance. Letting users shape the tool around their own needs was the winning strategy.
The full picture
How the vision changed
Before
Two assumptions, neither one defined.
After
What I'd carry forward
Lessons learned
Research needs credibility before it can scale
Early on, the biggest challenge wasn't capacity. It was organizational clarity about what research is for and how to work with it.
Keep early infrastructure lean
A heavy tagging system can actually hurt discoverability. Early repositories work better lean and intuitive than comprehensive.
Don't become a ticketing system
Intake and prioritization kept research focused on the highest-impact work, not on whoever was most urgent or loudest.
AI augments the work; it doesn't replace it
AI is strongest at speeding up preparation, summarization and aggregation. It struggles with interpretation and judgment.
The rest of the story
Building the research function behind this work
This case study covers the research itself. How I built and led the team, the playbooks, intake and prioritization that let it scale, and how we brought AI into our workflows is its own story.
Open to new opportunities
Let's work together
UX Research Director · Head of Research · AI Strategy, remote or relocating