Teachers Mutual Bank Limited
Bringing KYC online for Internet Banking customers
My role & responsibility
I collaborated with
Duration
April - July 2025
What impact has the project had?
Intangible impact
Starting this project felt a bit bittersweet. There was no existing design foundation, no precedent, and the work surfaced a mix of expected and unexpected issues along the way. But those learnings became valuable inputs for Phase 2 improvements.
Seeing the experience actively used, and later iterated on, by the Internet Banking team reinforced that the work created real operational value and laid the groundwork for a smoother form-filling experience.
Tangible impact
By November 2025, more than 20% of customers successfully completed the KYC process online. This helped speed up customer data collection, reduced manual processing for the bank, and introduced a digital capability that previously didn’t exist. The new experience supported more than 21,000 online submissions.
What was the problem?
A large number of customers hadn’t completed due diligence when they originally opened their accounts. Due to regulatory requirements, they needed to verify their personal and financial information within a set timeframe. This process is known as KYC (Know Your Customer).
At the time, the process was handled entirely through paper forms. I was brought into the project to help digitise the experience so the bank could:
reach customers more efficiently
reduce manual processing and data entry errors
maintain more up-to-date customer information
improve visibility of higher-risk customers
From a customer perspective, completing KYC with minimal friction was important — failure to do so could result in account restrictions.
What were the key challenges and how I approached them?
The following images are recreated versions of the original product and do not reflect the exact live interface. They are intended to closely represent the experience while demonstrating my design process.
Challenge 1
No existing design environment
At the time, there wasn’t a designer embedded in the Internet Banking team. Product owners and developers had historically filled that gap, and there were no existing design files or design system in place.
Before designing the experience itself, I needed to make sure:
the form content was clear and understandable
the interface aligned with existing Internet Banking patterns
KYC form draft provided by Internet Banking team
Solution 1
I recreated the existing environment from scratch and built the first design file based on the live product.
It wasn’t the most glamorous task, but it became the foundation for future iterations and collaboration with developers.
Design system overview showing all the reusable components
Challenge 2
Technical constraints affecting completion
Due to system limitations, personal information and financial information lived in different parts of the platform. Ideally, the experience would have been consolidated into a single flow, but that wasn’t technically feasible at the time.
This meant the process had to be split across multiple sections, which naturally introduced more friction.
One of the main design questions became: How do we help people move through the right sections without losing momentum halfway through?
Personal information update was not part of the form
Solution 2
I designed clear pathways between personal information updates and the KYC form itself.
The goal was to help customers:
understand what needed to be completed
know where they were in the process
continue the journey without feeling lost between sections
Some parts worked as expected, while others revealed new issues once customers started using the experience. Those learnings later informed discussions around Phase 2 improvements.
KYC form step 1 - enabling user to update information if required.
Challenge 3
Time and resource limitations
At the time, there wasn’t capacity for larger system improvements, and we also didn’t have tools or processes in place for formal usability testing.
Solution 3
To get a more objective perspective, I shared the experience with internal team members who weren’t directly involved in the project.
This helped surface clarity issues early and gave me a better sense of where users might hesitate or get confused.
A massive part of this was untangling outdated and confusing language.
Some examples included:
financial terms like “source of funds” and “source of wealth”
outdated occupation and employment labels
I worked closely with the Communications team to make sure the language stayed clear, accurate, and consistent across both paper and digital formats.
Some of the changes included:
updating labels to be more inclusive and modern (e.g. “housewife” → “stay-at-home parent”)
clarifying the difference between occupation and employment status (for example, “retired” is a status, not an occupation) allowing “student” as an employment status to reduce friction when navigating long occupation lists
guiding customers through the correct process for name changes, since the pre-filled name field couldn’t be edited directly
Because the form dealt with sensitive personal and financial information, tone and trust were especially important. I also presented the experience with Customer Engagement Lead to get feedback from a more customer-facing perspective.
KYC form step 2 with streamlined occupation list, way to update personal detail and simplified terminology.
What actually happened
Post-launch, the Communications lead and developers flagged something interesting: a bunch of customers were dropping off at Step 1, where they confirmed their details. Feedback suggested they didn't realise the form had multiple steps.
That raised some important questions for Phase 2:
Were my prompts clear enough about what was coming?
How could I signal progress better?
I didn't get to solve those myself, but I handed over the insights and design files to the team. Sometimes that's the win—knowing what to fix next.
What I'm proud of…
Taking a compliance process from zero to digital in a few months. Seeing people actually use it — with 21,000+ submissions in the first couple of months, and knowing the work made it easier for customers to stay compliant instead of having their accounts frozen.
What happened next?
By January 2026, I had transitioned onto the broader website transformation initiative, but the Internet Banking team continued building on the KYC foundations established during Phase 1.
The Customer Journey Lead later reached out for support on future Internet Banking enhancements, and I shared the emerging design system and design work so it could be reused across upcoming projects.
Then Phase 2 discussions began, the team also reached out for advice around restructuring the form flow and improving the overall experience.
Sometimes the best outcome is knowing you've built something useful enough that other people want to keep building on it.