Challenging the banking experience

Image

We met up with Jacob Thordson, Product manager of Northmill Bank’s saving accounts, to learn the latest news and updates from his department.


According to a nationwide survey, Northmill ranked the fourth most solvent bank in Sweden, can you tell us more?

- It was a nationwide survey including all 88 Swedish banks. As you mentioned we ranked as the 4th most solvent bank in Sweden with 26 percent. The average was about 6 percent. We understand it’s not the only important measure, but seen isolated and in contrast to only measuring customer growth, we think this is a refreshing metric that rarely is used to assess neobanks.

Seen from your role as a product manager, are there any tangible insights or conclusions to be made from the survey?

- Well, I think it’s a very interesting result because it says a lot about our way of working. Especially in the product department. We work in small teams with clear ownership over each product. That makes us agile and creates a swift and efficient workflow, which evidently has a beneficial effect for the whole company. It enables us to shorten development times and release products more frequently.

How do you know if your product development is gaining positive momentum?

- We have a customer satisfaction rate of over 90 percent and a scalable technical infrastructure. It provides us with very good prerequisites to grow our bank offering and to continuously add products and features that help people in their everyday lives.

What is the key to developing products that meet the customer needs?

- The key is to constantly challenge the idea of what a modern banking experience should be like. Things like interacting and listening to our customers, observing behaviors and trends, are imperative to be able to find new ways to solve our customers' needs. Trying to see beyond the most obvious solutions and take the bigger picture into account is also an essential part of finding new innovative ways to solve real customer needs.

What distinguishes Northmill’s savings offer from its competitors?

- We are a product focused neobank with a state-of-the-art tech platform that makes us highly agile and resourceful. That veracity translates into us always having a customer centric focus on everything we do, from product development to customer support. Our savings offer is no exception to that truth. Citing back to what we talked about earlier — our solvency — along with our strong organic growth, our technical assets and our aspiration to always put the customer in the first room, that’s what really separates us from our competitors.

How do you think a future Savings Account may look like?

- I believe that every serious business out there — from traditional banks and financial institutes, to niche banks and neobanks — will all have to take a more proactive approach in supporting their customers to help them obtain a healthy personal financial life, optimized to each customer's individual needs. Taking decisions based on data and customer knowledge for the benefit of the customer is already an important factor. This won't change, rather accelerate. Personalized savings recommendations and offerings that put the well-being of the customer in focus will be the result of it and a central part when developing future products.