Rates, instalments and total cost show up before the signature. The image is a mockup built from the design screens. The flow shipped in 2022.
In 30 seconds
- Taking out a loan at Bemol meant going to a store, and the product didn't exist in the app: 1,600 loan searches led nowhere. For someone in the interior of Amazonas, the trip could take a day.
- I facilitated three days of Lean Inception discovery and designed the application flow and the conditions screen, with rates, instalments and total cost legible before signing.
- Within six months, contracting through the app grew 500% and the main channel moved from the counter to self-service. The product grew enough to move to Conta Bemol, the financial services team.
- Bemol Digital
- Product Designer
- Product Design
- Bemol App
- 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 measured all along; it just needed someone to go and look.
Two problems, and both were about trust
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.
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. Here, ambiguity turns into a trust problem.
From discovery to the flow
The scope came out of three days of Lean Inception, with an agile coach, stakeholders and engineering in the same room. From there came the application flow, built for someone applying with nobody beside them to answer questions.
The board from the three days.
The outcome, and its consequence
Within six months, loan contracting through the app grew 500%, and the main channel moved from the store counter to self-service. Call centre volume migrated faster than projected.
The success also changed the structure: 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
- 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
- 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.