Bringing bank product management into the digital age

A systematic approach to managing digital products barely exists in traditional banking despite years of digital transformation programmes. Why is this important? Without a mindset shift in product management, banks will continue to remain behind modern digital-first companies in functionality and customer experience (CX).

For most incumbents, product management is primarily seen as a marketing function, focused on pricing, terms and conditions, and offline and online marketing. However, to compete in a digital world, the function should guide every step of a product’s lifecycle, from development to positioning and pricing.

This is the mindset of digital-first enterprises. Their product managers are running particular product lines as an independent business, going much deeper into functionality and CX. Often, they are referred to as ‘mini CEOs’ because of their end-to-end ownership of the product.

Structured digital product management is also a response to the accelerated velocity of agile development and marketing. The days of placing a banner and then measuring the result six months later – as was the norm in physical marketing – are gone. Banks need to receive feedback, experiment and adapt in much shorter cycles, such as hours, days or, on the outside, weeks.

Banks can’t apply decades-old, physical marketing practices and expect that they will compete with challengers focused on the end-to-end success of digital products.

Building a solid foundation

Many traditional banks have tried to adopt the mechanics of digital-first models, such as consumer apps TikTok, Instagram and Spotify, without understanding the mindset shift that underpins their success. While a vast body of knowledge is available relating to digital-savvy product management, the concept has yet to gain traction with banks. Yet they are missing a strategic foundation layer. 

Digital-first product management starts with a good product designer and product manager. Only then should the organisation begin thinking about which agile framework to adopt. 

While customer centricity is a common mantra for traditional banks, building products around the customer can only happen if there’s clear ownership of those products. The product manager’s role is much more hands-on than a chief data, digital or innovation officer, and they should have enough autonomy and decision-making authority to truly own the products. 

Velocity is not only about the speed of delivery, but also knowing what to deliver. It’s not about the number of features, but understanding what customers actually need to get done – and building toward that. The digital product manager’s role is to determine what the right feature is, which will continuously evolve. 

The golden rule of business is that customers are always right; however, the golden rule of banking is that customers are clueless. Instead of asking customers what to build, a product manager should identify the correct thing to build for a particular customer segment. They should make assumptions, build a product and then see if customers use and enjoy it, then determine whether it provides value. 

The starting point is to have the right people with the right mindset and giving them decision-making authority. 

Measure, monitor and iterate

While challengers may not be taking over the entire banking space, they are raising customer expectations. They personalise based on life moments and emotional context, not just transactions. 

Today, it’s not enough to build a nice-looking mobile app once. Using structured digital product management, banks should deploy practices such as short feedback loops, experimentation, A/B testing, and so on.

They should also monitor engagement metrics to ensure continuous improvement. Often assumptions made at the beginning of the journey are flawed, if not wrong, due to a superficial understanding of the customer's needs. To learn what works best, banks must continuously engage, measure and experiment. 

This isn’t innovation – which I define as a groundbreaking step change – but business-as-usual continuous improvement. It’s the norm for every digital-first company, but is still far from being the norm in the traditional banking space.