DesignOps Global Conference 2022

Presenter Profile: Mark joined Thought Machine in 2015 to push FinTech to adhere to the future of consumer banking by leading the creative laboratory of the company. This experimental arm is called Cauldron and the team of designers and engineers have been inventing and building pioneering digital experiences for over 5 years with products such as Nestlings, Saviour, and Vault Rare demonstrating the true flexibility of the core banking engine. Since joining the company, Mark has been responsible for evolving the company culture and acts as a pillar within the wider team to deliver world class levels of team satisfaction with his boundless enthusiasm for hard work and fun going hand in hand. Mark’s background is in electronics engineering and creative design. Prior to joining Thought Machine, Mark founded a digital design company delivering creative solutions to clients, including Selfridges and KPMG, and worked as a financial services consultant at Accenture and Capco. Mark began his career as a Weapons Engineer at The Royal Navy following the completion of his degree in Electronics Engineering at Southampton University. Mark founded the award-winning ‘Busking Cancer’ initiative and a cashless giving app called SnapDonate, and received the Young Engineer for Britain award in 1997.

Presentation Title: Inclusive Design in Banking

Outline: The talk will be about product design for a vulnerable sector that is the unbanked population within the U.K. and wider geographies globally. Specifically within the U.K. there are 1.3m who are not banked for a variety of reasons. The FCA and wider research indicates that 40% of the 1.3m are fearful that they may not have the right documentation…but would like to be banked. Working alongside our client, Lloyds Banking Group, we have delved into the unbanked sector and are discovering design approaches that are enabled via ‘zero app banking’ and utilise instead a purely text based interface to engage with this vulnerable group of people. The design system needs to cater for a market that is largely non-smartphone, low data or low internet access and therefore this presents a design challenge within a highly regulated industry that we are working to relax appropriately such that these vulnerable people can be served with lite banking.

Company Website: https://cauldron.co