2022

Credit without the counter

Taking out a loan at Bemol meant going to a store. For customers across Amazonas, many of them hours from the nearest one, that was a wall rather than a friction. This brought loans into the app for the first time.

Company
Bemol Digital
Role
Product Designer
Scope
Product Design
Channels
Bemol App
Status
Launched · 2022

What changed

Six months after launch.

+500%
Loan applications through the app
1,600 → 0
Searches that ended in nothing, before launch

A product that existed everywhere except where people looked

Empréstimos Bemol had been running in the physical store network for years. In the app, it didn't exist at all: customers searched for it and found nothing.

The number that made the case wasn't a projection. It was already in the logs: 1,600 loan-related searches on the platform, and not one of them ended in an application, because there was nothing to apply to.

1,600 searches for a product that couldn't be bought. The demand had been measurable the whole time. Nobody had gone looking for it.

Two problems, named separately

  1. Problem 1

    Distance was the real barrier, not paperwork

    For a customer in the interior, applying meant a trip that could take a day. Any solution that still required showing up in person would have missed the people who needed it most.

  2. Problem 2

    Financial products punish unclear interfaces

    Rates, instalments and total cost had to be legible before signing, to someone doing this alone on a phone with no attendant to ask. Ambiguity here is a trust issue, not a usability one.

Discovery: three days, Lean Inception

  • Discovery workshop for loans in the app

Facilitated with an agile coach, stakeholders and engineering in the room.

The application flow

  • Loan application screens in the Bemol app

Conditions, before the signature

  • Loan conditions and approval screen

Rates, instalments and total cost, legible before committing: the trust screen.

The outcome, and its consequence

Within six months, loan contracting through the app grew 500%, moving the dominant channel from the store counter to self-service. Call centre volume migrated faster than projected.

The success had a structural consequence worth naming: because of its scale and financial complexity, Empréstimos was eventually moved out of the core app team and into Conta Bemol, the dedicated financial services team.

What didn't ship

  • Simulating a loan before eligibility was known

    The credit engine only returned terms after an eligibility check. Showing indicative numbers that could change later would have been worse than showing none.

  • In-app renegotiation of an existing loan

    Out of scope for the first release and dependent on a service that didn't exist yet. It went to Conta Bemol along with the product.

Who did what

Christofer

  • Facilitated the three-day discovery with an agile coach
  • Application flow and the design of the conditions screen
  • Interface copy for rates, instalments and total cost

Com o time

  • Credit engine integration, with engineering
  • Regulatory and contractual review, with legal and risk
  • Rollout and monitoring, with the core app team

Reflections

The strongest argument was already in the logs.

This project didn't need research to be justified. It needed someone to look at what the search field had been recording for years and ask why nobody had answered it.

The 500% is the number that gets quoted, but the one that matters more is the geography behind it: people who could never reach a counter, applying from where they live.

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