FinTech at Octave
At Octave we love partnering with companies on important missions. Many of these projects have used innovation in technology and user experience in financial services to deliver meaningful results for the people of Aotearoa. Lowering the cost of lending and supporting Kiwis with their finances has never been more important than in the current financial climate. And we’re proud of the work we have done in this space.
So, what is FinTech?
Fintech refers to the integration of technology into offerings by financial services companies in order to improve their use and delivery to consumers. Octave has a lot of experience in the FinTech space.
Turn Up: Supporting the retail and hospo industry
Over the last couple of years, retail and hospitality have been hit hard with the impact of COVID. It’s been harder and harder to manage lumpy demand and attract staff.
Octave is developing a data-driven App to help retailers understand what the next month is likely to look like.
The App is called Turn Up, and the goal is to help retail and hospitality with their rostering and stock levels, as well as understand what is going on in their neighbourhood through the ability to benchmark their performance against comparable cohorts.
The App is underpinned by a mountain of data and smart data science, and it’s been a real challenge to design and develop a simple App for a wide audience. We’re excited about how things are progressing and the App is scheduled for beta launch Q1 2023.
The Co-operative Bank: Mobile Banking
One Octave project in the FinTech space I am particularly proud of is partnering with The Co-operative Bank on their new Mobile Banking App. The Co-operative Bank is NZ’s largest member-owner bank and is working hard to provide its customers with a better deal.
The Co-operative Bank leveraged our FinTech chops and we led the user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and customer experience (CX) design efforts and worked collaboratively with their inhouse development team.
The resulting Banking App was designed to resonate with a younger audience and has been well received, including being a finalist in the Digital Product category of the Best Awards.
EMS: Supporting NZ’s first carbon trading marketplace
As I mentioned, we love partnering with companies on important missions, and we recently worked with EMS (Energy Market Services), a wholly owned subsidiary of Transpower, to launch Aoteaoroa’s first carbon trading marketplace. It enables people to trade New Zealand carbon units in a safe and secure marketplace and volumes are growing all the time.
We kicked things off with market research, which included understanding the Emissions Trading Scheme, reviewing competitor offerings, and interviewing key players in the market. This provided valuable insight into the market and an understanding of the products and features of the marketplace that were likely to resonate with the target audience. In a series of workshops, we brought the findings together with EMS to create a Lean Canvas for the new marketplace. We then took these findings and designed and built EMS’s online presence.
Octave continues to work with leading companies to deliver innovative and impactful solutions in the financial services space. We have a lot of interesting work coming up delivering user-centered and data-driven solutions that will drive positive change and improve well-being for NZ businesses and their customers. If you want to learn more about how we can partner with your team, please get in touch at hello@octave.nz
