Developing innovative finance products to new segments in the Philippines

Our global client in the financial services industry reached out to MAKE to support their Filipino office in raising organisational awareness of design thinking. They were keen to empower their team and explore the impact that design thinking could have on reaching underrepresented customer segments.

Our team took a hands-on approach to ethnographic research alongside the Home Credit team, visiting the homes of clients around metro Manila to immerse in their experiences and learn their perspectives. This helped us all better understand their customers, identify new ones and map their want and needs. Each session we hosted with the team was conducted in Tagalog, and translated for ease of collaboration.

During our time with Home Credit, we collected hundreds of pieces of data, including over 700 individual observations, quotes and facts from the team and customers alike, and employed our proven synthesis technique  to code and sense-make important data and insights.

This approach helped us review lots of information, identifying patterns and showcasing the general sentiment of participants across specific topics at a glance.

By working closely with our partner’s senior management team, we were able to better map their steps to success. 

Together we helped the team devise frameworks to support them developing and testing quick wins and identifying opportunities, reviewing and prioritising prototypes and new ideas, and building capability internally with the help of their newly appointed volunteer champions.

Following our time together, Home Credit formed a team of internal change agents to enable them to move forward with these 3 steps and new client product and experience ideas. They also hired dedicated full time designers to help grow their design practice further.