Integrated Banking — Connecting Everyday Finances to Long-Term Prosperity

As the cost of living continues to rise and wages struggle to keep pace, the prospect of long-term financial security is proving to be an uphill battle for the majority of Australians. Traditional wealth building through property ownership is increasingly difficult to access, leaving individuals feeling helpless in securing their financial future. There’s currently no single solution that connects everyday finances and long-term objectives, making it hard for customers to reach their goals. CommSec and CommBank joined forces to build a new banking app that provides accessible alternatives to customers, and empowers all Australians to set themselves up for success.

The collaboration between CommSec and CommBank has led to a groundbreaking solution that streamlines financial management and promotes positive financial habits. The solution, which integrates investing with the core banking app, is the first step towards providing customers with a holistic view of their finances and a pathway to long-term financial security. This solution is rooted in CommBank's well-established and extensively researched customer-centric approach to ‘Financial Wellbeing’. It empowers customers to meet financial obligations, make life-enriching choices, feel financially in charge, and attain financial security now and in the future, even in the face of adverse circumstances.

Design was leveraged as a strategic tool to unite teams from CommSec and CommBank behind a bold vision: to help customers build wealth within their everyday banking app. A design-led culture facilitated the formation of agile, cross-functional teams around this vision. Through co-design, prototyping, and customer testing, teams bridged silos and collaborated to create powerful new features that resonate with customers in their daily lives. This process sparked positive changes in the business, fostering a more collaborative environment for staff, connecting teams to purpose, and ensuring positive customer outcomes.

User-centric: Developed in partnership with customers, SMEs, and stakeholders from CommSec and Commbank, the experience is backed by extensive quantitative and qualitative research, one-on-one interviews and testing with 60 customers using 17 unique prototypes, and piloted with 3,500 staff. Financial wellbeing at its core: Our mission is to promote financial wellbeing by imbuing our products with features that facilitate our customers to meet their immediate needs, prepare for the unexpected, and achieve long-term goals. Everyday automation: The experience is connected with easily configurable automatic functions. Providing customers with a comprehensive and intuitive app that caters to their needs, reduces overhead, and streamlines growth. Simple and accessible: Lowering the barrier to entry with simple, familiar concepts. The experience provides simple explainers and easy-to-use tools in accessible language, making investing accessible to everyone. Seamless integration: By bringing everyday banking and investing into a single solution it makes it easy for customers to create an investing account, but beyond this it allows them to think of their investments in the context of the rest of their finances. Designed to evolve: Equipped with a roadmap to guide and scale future iterations of the product, adding new features and pages that promote financial wellbeing.