Building, Instead of Breaking, the Bank

Svea Ekonomi is a financial group with operations spread across Europe. With 40 years of experience in shortening corporate credit times, they’ve become a natural choice for many entrepreneurs in choosing a financing partner.

For years, their services included administrative and financial solutions for small and large companies in all sectors. In addition to traditional offerings such as invoice services, factoring, invoice purchases, credit information and debt collection, Svea also offers deposits and lending to private individuals, as well as currency exchange.

After acquiring the small bank AMFA in 2016, they saw the potential to greatly expand their business and break into the banking sector in addition to their other financial services offerings. To help make this transition as smooth as possible, they turned to Valtech for help.

The entire banking experience with Svea needed to be built from the ground up. This required a digitisation and streamlining of the onboarding process. Prior to this transformation, the process required use of pen and paper. With the new portal we helped Svea build, the onboarding of new clients takes only moments and can be completed online. While established companies have been able to benefit from this added speed and convenience for a while, Svea’s digital platform is the first in Sweden that also allows new startups to open an account fully in the digital space without needing any paperwork.

The process of creating this platform featured a number of different steps undertaken by our multidisciplinary team made up of both Valtech and Svea employees. Our team analysed user needs and worked with insights to produce concepts, wireframes and prototypes. These concepts were rigorously developed, tested and validated before going live. The result was an innovative business banking platform focused on a great user experience.

We also helped in the creation of a customer service tool and a fully upgraded and rebranded website for Svea as a whole, not just the banking branch of the company.

Because Valtech prides itself on our ability to be full digital partners with our clients, our work with Svea didn’t stop at the platforms we built. As part of the push to grow Svea’s customer base, we also embarked on rebranding efforts.

Svea saw the need for a bank that could specialise in small to medium businesses. They recognized that small companies don’t often get attention from the big banks, and when they do enter into working relationships with the bigger banks, they often don’t get the kind of service that their larger counterparts enjoy.

However, as a financial services company that was most often known for its debt collection services within the region, a major rebranding was needed in order to capture the business they were looking for. This meant a full change to the visual brand guidelines as well as the tone of voice of the copy on the website. These guidelines were also translated into a complete design system for all of Svea’s digital products and services. This mean that, beyond the new banking system, Svea has the ability to roll out campaigns for all of their services that will adhere to the newly established brand guidelines.

Svea’s digital footprint in the banking industry continues to grow on a daily basis. Their onboarding process has accelerated considerably and gone completely digital. They currently have a customer service tool that could become fully automated in the future, and they have a customer portal through which their customers can access most of their services offerings beyond simply opening a bank account 24/7. And through our marketing efforts, Svea has been rebranded to better earn the business of the young professionals and the small to medium businesses that the market was neglecting.