Too many brilliant fintech ideas die a slow death, launching after months of work only to fall short of expectations. What if you could validate that same idea in just five days, before committing serious resources? 

This is the power of the Design Sprint, a disciplined framework that utilises design thinking and agile methodology to reduce risk and accelerate product development. At Gambit Finance, we have mastered this process; it's the engine behind our most transformative solutions. 

In this article, we pull back the curtain on our UX Design Sprint playbook, revealing exactly how we turn ambitious financial challenges into market-ready realities. 

An Introduction to Design Sprints: The Blueprint for Rapid Innovation 

A Design Sprint is a methodical, time-limited process that utilises design thinking to transform a complex problem into a tested solution rapidly. It usually lasts five days. It is a highly aggressive, dedicated, and team-oriented process that significantly accelerates product development. 

By emphasising rapid prototyping and user-centred design, the sprint condenses what could be months of discussion and development into a week. The purpose of a UX Design Sprint is to find solutions to urgent business issues and to test ideas with real users before investing a significant amount of money and effort in small-scale development. 

Why Implement a Design Sprint?

The logic behind embracing such a methodology is strong, particularly in the complex environment of financial services: 

  • Customer-Centric Innovation:  The Design Sprint is fundamentally end-user-focused. It achieves this by testing prototypes with real customers early in the process, ensuring that the final product resonates with its target audience and achieves a market fit. 

  • Risk Reduction: The financial sector is not a place for expensive errors. Design Sprints serve as an efficient risk-elimination tool, as they enable teams to experiment and identify potential weaknesses in the idea before it becomes a costly debacle. 

  • Efficiency: The time-boxed, structured format of the sprint compels teams to focus on what matters, and as a result, teams can solve complex problems in days rather than months. 

  • Teamwork: A Design Sprint can be described as one of the most valuable tools that help eliminate organisational silos. It unites cross-functional teams, including developers, designers, product managers, and stakeholders, creating a shared understanding of the solution and fostering common ownership. 

Here at Gambit, the power of Design Sprints has been utilised in perfecting and innovating our financial solutions suite. Whether it is the design of groundbreaking sustainable profiling tools that enable sustainable investing or the creation of AI-powered advisory platforms, our sprint process ensures that all the solutions we co-create are resilient, easy to use, and perfectly tailored to the needs of clients . 

Two Faces of Innovation: Gambit Design Sprint Types 

Design Sprints are not a universal tool at Gambit Finance. Our sprint strategy is customised according to the problem we are attempting to resolve, and it mostly falls under two broad categories: Internal and External Sprints. This two-step methodology enables us to continually optimise our services and address the individual innovation requirements of our customers as well. 

Internal Design Sprints: The Gear of Constant Upgrade 

We have internal sprints that focus on process optimisation and the development of our core products. They are self-reflective, profound excursions into our software and services designed to expand capabilities, enhance the user experience, and stay current with market trends. 

  • Product Development and Refinement: We dedicate a significant portion of our internal sprints to refining our flagship solutions. As an example, we have held sprints to develop our "Sustainability Profiling" tool. This option enables financial institutions to advise investors to create portfolios by allocating their funds to businesses and investments that focus on (ESG) environmental, social, and governance areas.  

  • Under-development Proactive Advice Module: It is not an AI but rather a complex ecosystem. It augments advisories with data and automation to support the advisor and their need for timely, pertinent, and human advice. Design Sprints have played an essential role in establishing the reasoning behind these alerts and creating an interface that is easy to follow, enabling bank and portfolio managers to make more informed decisions and spend less time on routine processes. 

External Design Sprints: Working with Our Clients to Co-Create the Future 

When a client approaches us with a specific problem or an idea for a new service, we start our external Design Sprints. The goal of these collaborative sprints is to create customised solutions and accomplish digital transformation. 

1) Using Generative AI: The financial industry is going through a significant shift due to the rise of LLMs, the development of large language models and generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI). We work with companies that wish to investigate the possibilities of Gen AI through external sprints. 

2) Improving Client-Bank Relationships: Some of our external initiatives focus on strengthening the fundamental relationship between a financial institution and its clients. This typically involves the development of systems where we apply Design Sprints to declutter complex financial information, making it transparent and comprehensible to the advisor. 

Real-World Impact: Financial Services 

The hypothetical advantages of Design Sprints are realised in the real world when they are applied in the financial services industry. This methodology has enabled Gambit to achieve substantial innovation in several areas by focusing solely on tangible results. 

  • User-Centric Products and Lean Operations: One of the most popular uses is the development of genuinely user-centered products. One of them is an excellent example of the digital onboarding process. We have used Design Sprints to assist clients in redesigning and digitalising the Know Your Customer (KYC) process, which is typically a burdensome and paper-intensive exercise, and streamlining it into an end-to-end digital and user-friendly experience. 

  • Enhancing Claims Processing: Claims processing has long been a source of frustration in the insurance industry. We have utilised Design Sprints to develop and design automated claims processing systems, aiming to decrease turnaround time and enhance customer satisfaction. 

  • Superior Risk Analysis: Effective risk analysis is a key aspect of finance, and possessing the correct skills is vital. Design Sprints are the ideal means of quickly prototyping AI-based analytics tools to assess risk. This enables institutions to experiment with and optimise predictive models within a restricted setting before implementing them on a large scale. 

  • Restructuring Digital Platforms: Whether it's a retail banking application or a wealth management portal, we apply Design Sprints to restructure digital platforms directly informed by user feedback, so the end product is self-explanatory and robust. 

Gambit Blueprint: Our Process of Running Design Sprints 

It takes more than a great idea to make a successful Design Sprint; it takes a rigorous and repeatable process. At Gambit, we've refined our implementation into a three-week timeline that ensures thorough preparation, intense ideation, and collaborative refinement, with a focus on problem-solving and product validation. 

Week 1: Foundation & Alignment 

The first week is dedicated to laying a solid foundation for the sprint. 

  • Internal Analysis: We begin by conducting a comprehensive review of the business goals, technical constraints, and the key metrics that will define success. 

  • Sprint Brief: We then create a detailed Sprint Brief. This crucial document defines the scope of the challenge, identifies all key stakeholders, and outlines the expected deliverables. This ensures that everyone is aligned before the sprint officially begins. 

Week 2: The Core Sprint - Ideation & Validation 

This is the classic five-day sprint week, where the magic of idea testing happens. 

  • Understand: The team aligns on the problem by mapping out user journeys and dissecting the business challenges. 

  • Diverge: We then move into individual brainstorming, using techniques such as silent ideation, detailed sketching, and the "Crazy 8s" exercise to generate a wide range of potential solutions. 

  • Converge: The team comes back together to critique the ideas, vote on the most promising solutions, and refine the top concepts into a cohesive plan. 

  • Prototype: A low-fidelity but realistic mockup of the solution is built. This could be a clickable prototype in Figma or even a detailed paper prototype. The goal is to curate something that users can connect with. 

  • Test: This is the moment of truth. We first conduct internal testing with the team to catch any obvious flaws. Then, we move on to user testing, where we validate the prototype with 5–7 real users to observe their behaviour and gather unfiltered feedback.  

Week 3: Refinement & Finalisation for Iterative Improvements 

The sprint doesn't end with the user tests. The final week is about synthesising the learnings and planning for iterative improvements. 

  • Client Collaboration: We present the prototype and the user testing findings to our clients and other stakeholders. This is a highly collaborative phase, often involving cross-functional workshops with engineering, marketing, teams to ensure alignment and cohesion. 

  • Iterate: Based on the user and client feedback, we make iterative improvements to the prototype, refining the solution and solidifying the path forward. This crucial product validation step ensures the final product meets all requirements. 

Client Success Stories: 

Our approach to innovation has led to successful collaborations with leading financial institutions, as highlighted on our "Innovation | Gambit Financial Solutions" page: 

  • BPCE: We partnered with BPCE to enhance their digital platforms for retail banking, using Design Sprints to improve the user experience and introduce new, innovative features. 

  • Beobank: For Beobank, we streamlined their claims processing by rapidly prototyping and validating automation solutions, resulting in increased efficiency and improved customer outcomes. 

  • Iskaar: In a forward-thinking project, we worked with Iskaar to develop a Gen AI assistant for financial advisory, demonstrating the power of Design Sprints to explore and harness cutting-edge technology. 

Why Gambit Stands Out 

  • Long-term Expertise: Every solution is curated, keeping the client's expectations in mind with expert guidance from professionals. 

  • End-to-End Co-Creation: Clients are embedded into Gambit's Innovation Team, co-developing every feature. 

The Heart of Innovation: Gambit's Innovation Team 

The driving force behind our success in innovation is Gambit's dedicated Innovation Team, led by the visionary duo of Ken Van Eesbeek and Julie Gilson. As detailed on our website under "Innovation | Gambit Financial Solutions-- our roots", our journey has been a strategic evolution. We started with a strong internal R&D focus and have grown into a recognised industry leader in co-creation. Their approach is holistic, ensuring that all sprints reflect both innovation potential and pragmatic feasibility. 

Conclusion: Gambit design sprints in the future 

The Design Sprint is not only a process that is more than enough for Gambit Finance, but it is also a significant component of our future strategy. It provides unmatched time savings and a definite process enhancement route. 

  • Continuous Improvement: We will continue to conduct frequent internal sprints to continually improve our products and ensure they remain at the forefront of the industry. 

  • Industry Leadership: We will continue to lead the development of new tools and technologies, including our Gen AI advisory platforms and sustainability profiling tools, through Design Sprints, which will serve as our primary mechanism for exploration and validation. 

  • Open Collaboration: We envision our future as one of open collaboration. Our partners and clients are welcome to co-create the future generation of financial solutions with us. 

We combine agile methodology and a passion for creating user-centred design to transform ambiguity into actionable innovation: faster, smarter, and with significantly less risk. It is the Design Sprint that enables us to navigate the future, and we invite you to join us in the sprint. 

Ready to transform your ideas into reality? Contact Gambit to explore a collaborative Design Sprint. 


 
gambitfinancialsolutions
Gambit Financial Solutions provides a modern digital platform that empowers (private) banks, insurance companies, and financial advisors to distribute financial savings solutions to their clients efficiently. The platform supports the digital journey of investors—from profiling and financial planning to investment and reporting—within a multi-investment service (discretionary management or advisory) and multi-product/wrapper framework. Clients’ portfolio construction relies on an optimizer algorithm enabling hyper personalization in the investment advice according to the client needs. Key strength of the platform is high industrialization of processes providing cost efficiency to the distributor and empowering its employees to focus on client interactions instead of back-office routines. At the forefront of innovation integrating AI in the advisory journey, Gambit adopts the highest cyber-security standards so distributors can trust that we give them the keys to new business and technological heights in all safety.