Open Co Discovery

Open Co is a financial group created after the merge of two credit institutions that target different audiences, specializing in unsecured credit. They approached us to help understand their audiences better, their feelings about loans and credit, and how Open Co could be a valuable resource for their financial futures. Our objective was to provide deep insights into their customer base and inside culture, and offer actionable recommendations for improving their credit offerings and approach.

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*due to the sensitive nature of the data in this project, I have omitted some of the insights and results. However, the case still describes the steps taken throughout the process.

The primary challenge was the cultural perception of credit in Brazil. Due to a history of exorbitant fees from financial institutions, credit is often viewed negatively rather than as an exciting opportunity. Consumers are usually wary of taking out a loan at an institution and would rather ask family and friends for help first, or wait until times are dire to reach out to a financial institution, when they will inevitably get worse conditions for their loans. Even when the financial institution carries a more friendly and transparent discourse, consumers do not fully believe them and have a sense of distrust that there are hidden fees or setbacks that they are not being told openly from the beginning. In such a historically charged environment, how does a financial institution gain the trust of their consumers?

To tackle this challenge, we embarked on a comprehensive discovery phase that utilized 6 research methods that both looked inwards at Open Co and outwards at the whole ecosystem.
These methods included:

• Data analysis: We analyzed the performance metrics of Open Co’s existing products on Google Analytics to identify trends and areas for improvement.
• Stakeholder interviews: We interviewed stakeholders individually and in groups to understand their positioning and what expectations they had for not only the upcoming report, but of how they felt like they fit in to the economic sphere.
• Investigative sessions: We conducted two investigative sessions on Miro - one with the design team and one with the customer support team. The customer support team shared the clients’ main pain points and complaints, while the design team shared their objectives and approach.
• Benchmark analysis: We looked at national and global products that deal with similar issues to understand how they tackle them and what we can learn from their approaches.
• Quantitative research: We distributed surveys to gather data from a broad user base. This provided us with valuable metrics after almost 3000 responses and helped us understand how Open Co's current products were performing. In the surveys, we focused on understanding what made consumers consider taking out a loan for and what their pain points were.
• Qualitative research: We conducted individual interviews with 24 people, half of whom were not Open Co clients either by their own choice or by being denied credit.

After gathering as much information as we could during the research phase, we needed to study what we learnt and make sense of all of it in order to organize all our insights into categories.

Some of the insights we discovered included:

• The open-minded discourse that our client claims to have is not perceived by the consumers. There were a lot of bureaucratic steps and delays in responses that did not align with the swiftness promised.
• Each of the two segments within Open Co had different cultures that were not working together to create one solid, trustworthy company
• Our client did not fully understand their userbase and did not know how to approach them successfully in order to turn their leads into clients

From our other research, we also got a better understanding of the type of credit the users wanted and had gotten in the past, what else they believed the institution could do for them. Times have changed along with the introduction and permeation of the gig economy, which means economical needs have changed with them, but credit processes have largely stayed the same.

From these insights, we created a new framework to delineate the process to understand the clients’ needs and offer the ideal type of credit for their situation. This framework took into consideration the nature of their “credit trigger”, which would influence the fees the client would receive along with the availability of the loan and the experience they would receive during the loan process and payback.

The Discovery Report provided Open Co with a clear understanding of their target audiences. Key insights included:

• The need for a new approach to offering credit that reflects current economic realities.
• The importance of addressing the negative perceptions of credit among Brazilian customers.
• Specific strategies for engaging different audience segments effectively.

Our product discovery work for Open Co highlighted the importance of understanding cultural and emotional contexts in financial products. By providing actionable insights and recommendations, we helped Open Co reposition their offerings to better meet the needs of their customers. This project not only delivered valuable results for Open Co but also reinforced the significance of thorough product discovery in creating user-centric financial solutions.