Banking Process Redesign

Building smarter workflows for better banking customer experiences

A bank with over $58M in assets undertook a process transformation initiative to modernise operations and improve customer experiences. More than 100 business processes were evaluated to identify friction points and inefficiencies, with five high-impact, customer-facing workflows prioritised for redesign. 

Using process improvement frameworks and best practices, we projected a 30% reduction in account opening processing times and improved customer satisfaction scores.

Process Redesign Lead

2023

To stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market, this bank launched a comprehensive review of all business processes to modernise operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and elevate customer service. This was necessary as the bank faced several challenges:

Complex, manual and inefficient workflows
  • Core processes such as account opening relied heavily on manual steps and redundant approvals.

    These inefficiencies created delays, increased the likelihood of errors, and limited the bank’s ability to scale as demand grew.
Inconsistent service delivery across channels
  • Customers received very different experiences among the different banking channels: in-branch, online, or by phone.

    Digital channels lacked functionality compared to in-person service, leading to frustration, higher branch traffic, and erosion of trust in the bank’s ability to deliver a seamless experience.
Limited visibility into workflow performance
  • Because processes were fragmented and data was not consistently captured, the bank had little transparency into where bottlenecks occurred or which improvements would have the greatest impact.

    This made it difficult to prioritise investments or measure service performance effectively

With a growing customer base, rising expectations for digital banking, and increasing competition in the financial sector, the bank saw the urgency of streamlining operations. 

This process review would lay the foundation for redesigning high-impact workflows that could deliver immediate improvements while enabling long-term scalability and future automation.

The project focused on identifying bottlenecks and opportunities, and redesigning prioritised workflows for simplicity, efficiency, and customer impact. As the process improvement lead, I guided the team through the following steps to deliver this initiative:

Tools & Methods Used:

APQC Process Classification Framework,

Workshops, Mystery Shopper, Customer Journey

Process Understanding

Partnered with departments across the bank to understand existing workflows end-to-end, documenting redundancies, handoff delays, and non-value-added steps that created friction for both customers and employees.

Process Evaluation

Applied APQC’s process maturity model across five domains – knowledge, people, integration, performance, and technology – to more than 100 workflows. For each process, each domain was scored on a three (3) point maturity scale. 

Then, each process was assigned an overall rating from one (1) to five (5) (initiate, develop, standardize, optimise, innovate). This provided a consistent view of process health and maturity.

Prioritisation

Maturity scores were weighted against strategic alignment, risk and compliance, and customer impact. From this analysis, five (5) high-impact workflows, including account opening and loan processing, were selected for redesign.

Workshops & Benchmarking

Facilitated cross-functional stakeholder workshops to deepen understanding of the selected five process, validate findings and to uncover root causes of inefficiencies. 

To capture the real customer perspective, we also conducted a mystery shopping exercise on the account opening process, surfacing gaps between customer expectations and actual delivery.

Future State Design

Developed streamlined, future-state workflows using best practices, with an emphasis on customer journeys and minimising friction at each touchpoint. Identified opportunities for automation and scalability to ensure long-term efficiency and resilience.

The redesigned workflows were projected to deliver improvements in efficiency, customer experience, and operational scalability, positioning the bank to handle higher volumes and drive future automation initiatives:

Projected 30% faster processing across redesigned workflows

Streamlined steps in account opening and loan applications projected to reduce turnaround times significantly, especially with a reduction in duplication of efforts and data entry.

This not only improved operational efficiency but also gave the bank the ability to handle higher volumes without adding headcount.

Higher customer satisfaction with more consistent experiences across all service channels

Customers are expected to encounter fewer errors, delays, and handoffs, whether banking in-branch, online, or by phone.

Early feedback from the bank indicated a strong desire from customers for more adoption of digital channels, and a reduction in in-branch traffic.

Identified automation opportunities projected to further increase efficiency and reduce manual effort

By evaluating over 100 processes, the bank highlighted key areas for automation (such as document verification and approval routing).

These insights gave leadership a roadmap to continue improving productivity and lowering operational costs while freeing employees to focus on higher-value, customer-facing activities.