FINTECH/ BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES
Role: Business Analyst
Agile Scrum
Sterling Trust Bank (STB), not the real bank name, for confidentiality reasons. One of the UK’s top five financial institutions, serving over 25 million customers, embarked on a significant digital transformation programme to modernise its customer onboarding journey
Despite strong digital capabilities, the bank experienced a 35–40% drop-off rate during onboarding, particularly at the document upload and compliance verification stages
Customers lacked visibility into application progress, integrations between systems were inconsistent, and manual checks created bottlenecks that slowed verification and reduced customer satisfaction
This project aimed to streamline the onboarding experience, improve operational efficiency, and reduce onboarding time to under 10 minutes while ensuring complete alignment with UK financial regulations
STB faced several systemic issues impacting onboarding performance
Fragmented systems (Salesforce, OpenText, FLEXCUBE, Refinitiv) with limited real-time integrations
High document rejection rates due to poor validation and manual re-entry
A lack of customer transparency can lead to frustration and abandonment
Compliance backlog caused by false positives and manual case reviews
Operational inefficiency, leading to lost deposits and missed revenue opportunities
These issues created friction across the onboarding process and weakened customer acquisition efforts
As the Consultant BA, I was responsible for analysing the existing customer onboarding ecosystem, identifying process gaps, defining solution requirements, and supporting iterative delivery across digital, compliance, and IT teams
Conducted interviews with the Chief Digital Officer, Compliance leads, IT architects, Operations, and Branch Onboarding Managers
Facilitated cross-functional workshops to align business goals with technical feasibility
Developed stakeholder matrix and communication plan
Performed end-to-end gap analysis to diagnose breakdowns across document upload, KYC, screening, and verification stages
Documented functional & non-functional requirements in Confluence
Created Epics, User Stories, and Acceptance Criteria in Jira
Prioritised requirements using MoSCoW and business value scoring
Developed a detailed AS-IS onboarding workflow across four core systems
Designed optimised TO-BE journeys with real-time data flow & validation
Supported API integration strategy to synchronise Salesforce → OpenText → FLEXCUBE
Contributed to UI/UX recommendations for reducing cognitive load during onboarding
Designed Power BI dashboards to track: Drop-off rate, Turnaround time (TAT), Document rejection rate, Compliance review backlog
Designed optimised TO-BE journeys with real-time data flow & validation
Delivered dashboards that became part of the digital governance reporting suite
Developed UAT test scripts and coordinated testing with Digital & Compliance teams
Managed defect logging, triage, and resolution in Jira
Conducted pre-release readiness checks and post-implementation review
Documented lessons learned and recommended sprint-level process improvements
Provided handover documentation and operating procedures for BAU teams
Confluence
Lucidchart
Power BI
Jira
Microsoft 365
ServiceNow
Reduced digital onboarding drop-off rate by 18% (target: 20%) during pilot
Cut onboarding time from 25 minutes to 11 minutes
Improved CSAT scores by 12% post-launch
Reduced customer support escalations by 30%
Delivered real-time KPI dashboards embedded into Confluence
Strengthened collaboration between Digital, Compliance, IT Architecture, and Operations