NAB - National Australia Bank

Shaping personal banking experiences at enterprise scale

As Head of Design for Personal Banking Experience, I led a 35+ person design organisation across sales and acquisition, sign-up, onboarding, activation, payments, cards, wallets, loyalty, financial wellbeing, identity, servicing and retail banking transformation. My role combined experience and product strategy with hands-on stewardship of design quality. As a member of the Personal Everyday Banking Partner Leadership team, I aligned the vision for Everyday Banking directly with senior leaders and helped shape new propositions, roadmaps and delivery priorities.

MY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Setting the experience direction across the Personal Everyday Banking portfolio

• Guiding new propositions, strategic briefs, roadmaps and delivery priorities with senior leaders

• Leading design managers, design leads and a multidisciplinary team across a 35+ person design organisation

• Connecting the journey from sales and acquisition through sign-up, onboarding, activation and everyday banking

• Directing design across payments, cards, wallets, loyalty, financial wellbeing, identity, servicing and retail - branch transformation

• Managing trade-offs between delivery, customer outcomes and longer-term experience quality

• Representing design on the Personal Everyday Banking Partner Leadership team and influencing executive decisions

THE CHALLENGE

One connected service, delivered across many teams and channels

Each team had its own commitments, but customers experienced the bank as one connected service. The challenge was to create clearer direction for important customer experiences while improving quality and consistency across the wider system.

This meant guiding briefs at a portfolio level, shaping longer-term propositions and connecting the full journey from acquisition and sign-up through to everyday use across digital, assisted and self-service banking.

END-TO-END PROPOSITION

From the first promise to the everyday experience

I was responsible for sales and acquisition pages, sign-up, onboarding and activation, as well as the products and services customers used once they joined NAB. I guided how new products were explained and positioned, how customers understood the offer before joining, and how that promise carried through sign-up and onboarding into the ongoing banking experience. The aim was to make each proposition coherent across the whole journey, rather than treating acquisition, onboarding and the product as separate experiences.

EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP

Representing design in the decisions shaping Everyday Banking

As a member of the Personal Everyday Banking Partner Leadership team, I represented design in the decisions shaping the domain. I worked directly with senior business, product and technology leaders to align vision and translate it into priorities across the portfolio. I participated in and guided every new proposition entering the domain, helping teams clarify the customer opportunity, challenge assumptions and understand how each proposition contributed to the wider banking experience. I also guided and influenced stakeholders on roadmaps and delivery, making the implications of choices visible and working through competing customer, commercial, regulatory and technical needs.

PORTFOLIO STRATEGY

Connecting decisions across the domain

I worked with product, business and technology leaders to guide briefs across payments, cards and wallets, loyalty and rewards, financial wellbeing, identity, servicing and retail banking. My role was to frame the right customer problems, clarify the strategic opportunity and translate ambition into focused work.

PAYMENTS

Viewing payments as a connected customer experience

My scope included design direction across payments, cards and digital wallets. I guided briefs and aligned priorities, dependencies and experience decisions across teams, platforms and delivery horizons. This created a stronger view of payments as a connected experience, covering how customers pay, move and manage their money, rather than a collection of separate initiatives.

LOYALTY AND FINANCIAL WELLBEING

Creating clearer everyday value

For loyalty and rewards, I helped shape how the proposition could create clearer value for customers and connect more meaningfully with their everyday banking relationship. I also ensured a connected strategy across NAB’s financial wellbeing tools, encouraging teams to think beyond individual features and consider how the experiences could help customers understand their money, build confidence and make more informed decisions over time. I provided thought leadership on the benchmark we should aim for and navigated the strategy with business, product and technology stakeholders to align on a clear direction.

RETAIL - BRANCH TRANSFORMATION

Connecting physical, assisted and self-service banking

I provided design direction for the transformation of retail banking experiences, including teller-assisted services and ATMs. This required looking at how physical, assisted and self-service experiences should evolve together. I helped teams consider customer and colleague needs alongside operational, technology and regulatory constraints, and maintain a connected experience between the branch and customers’ wider relationship with NAB.

DESIGN FOUNDATIONS

Stronger standards without slowing delivery

I strengthened standards, tooling and ways of working across the design organisation. This included clearer expectations for experience quality, customer advocacy, design maturity and design system reuse. I stayed close to the work through reviews with design leaders and teams, helping identify where an experience needed refinement, where patterns could be reused and where a problem required a broader view across journeys. I also introduced a more deliberate portfolio view of demand, capacity and investment. Better visibility of priorities and dependencies helped identify duplication and rework earlier and created clearer conversations about trade-offs.

DEVELOPING THE ORGANISATION

I set clearer expectations, coached designers and design leaders, and created greater consistency in how quality was understood and supported across the chapter.

During this period, team engagement increased from 71 to 79 while we continued to strengthen delivery effectiveness and operational maturity.

THE OUTCOME

Clearer strategic direction and a more connected design capability

The work created clearer strategic direction across the end-to-end customer journey, from sales and sign-up through to payments, loyalty, financial wellbeing and retail banking transformation. Teams had stronger briefs, stronger standards, a more consistent approach to quality and better visibility of priorities, capacity and dependencies. Design also had a clearer role in shaping decisions across the organisation.