Digital banking onboarding

Company context

Northbank is a fictional retail bank with mobile account opening. Identity checks use an external provider; support and compliance teams review exceptions.

Business problem

35% of applicants abandon digital onboarding before account creation. A sponsor asks for a new progress bar, but no root cause has been established.

Stakeholders

• Applicants
• Product Owner
• Operations
• Compliance and fraud
• UX
• Engineering
• Identity provider

Stakeholder interviews

• Support: “Customers often call after upload retries, but we cannot tell what they saw.”
• Compliance: “An expired session must never restore unverified identity data.”
• Engineering: “Provider timeout events are mixed with customer cancellations.”

Existing process

• Start application and provide details
• Accept consent and upload ID
• External provider verifies identity
• Create account and activate access

Business rules

• Applicants must explicitly consent before verification.
• Expired identity sessions require a new verification attempt.
• An applicant must not create duplicate active accounts.

Customer feedback

• “I uploaded my ID twice and still got sent back.”
• “I did not know whether I could finish later.”

Sample data

• 35% abandon before account creation
• Upload step has the highest visible drop-off
• A single applicant can generate multiple sessions

Constraints

• Do not weaken KYC controls
• Protect ID data
• Release in a limited cohort first

System / API information

The identity API returns a provider session ID, status and error code. Callbacks can be delayed; timeout is currently shown as a generic failure.

What would you deliver?

1. Identify stakeholders and missing information
2. Write discovery questions
3. Map AS-IS and pain points
4. Define business rules and requirements
5. Write stories and acceptance criteria
6. Specify API/data dependencies
7. Design TO-BE and UAT scenarios
8. Define KPIs and recommend a solution

Your working notes

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