Case 02 — COBA

The Team & Process

Who was involved and how we worked.

Product OwnerStakeholder & scope

CJMCustomer journey manager

Engineering3 engineers — front & back end

QA2 testers

ResearchUser researcher

DesignUX / UI / Service designer

ContentContent writer

ExternalLegal & fraud — as needed

01 Stakeholder mapping Every project starts with a stakeholder map — identifying all team members, external colleagues, and dependencies so nothing is missed and the right people are involved from the start.

02 Working groups & requirements We ran working group sessions to align on what the project was about, documented all requirements in Jira, and looped in legal and fraud where there was a regulatory or security dimension.

03 Sketches & early wireframes Before committing to any direction, I sketched ideas quickly to bring to working groups — lightweight enough to invite challenge, clear enough to spark a useful conversation with stakeholders.

04 Strawman prototype Once alignment was reached on direction, we built a strawman prototype to give the project shape — enough to stress-test assumptions internally before going anywhere near users.

05 Research & iteration With something concrete to test, we created a research discussion plan and defined the assumptions we needed to validate. Testing findings fed directly back into the design — iterating until we had something we were confident to ship.

06 High-fidelity prototype & stakeholder sign-off Once the design was validated through research, we moved to a high-fidelity prototype reflecting the final UI and content. This was presented to stakeholders for formal sign-off — ensuring everyone from product to legal was aligned before a single line of production code was written.

07 Dev handover & build monitoring Designs were handed over to engineering with annotated specs and a dedicated handover session to walk through edge cases, states, and interactions. Throughout the build phase, I stayed close — reviewing implementations, flagging deviations, and making sure what shipped matched what was designed.

08 Performance monitoring via Power BI Post-launch, we tracked how the service was performing against the success metrics defined at the outset — adoption rate, support call volume, and data accuracy. Power BI dashboards gave us a live view of the numbers, letting us confirm we had hit our targets and identify anything that needed a follow-up iteration.

The Problem

A simple task with no digital path.

"I had to fill in a form, post it, and then call to find out if it had been processed. For changing an address. It's 2024."

Business customers often hold multiple addresses — a registered address, a trading address, a mailing address. These can change frequently as businesses move, restructure, or expand. But in the Business Banking app (BNGA), there was no way to update any of them digitally.

The only options were a paper form sent by post or a call to customer support — with no visibility of where the change was in the process, and no confirmation when it was done. For busy business owners, this friction meant many simply didn't bother, leaving the bank with inaccurate or stale address data across a significant portion of its business customer base.

01 No self-serve channel. Customers had to leave the app entirely to make what should be a routine change — creating unnecessary friction and drop-off.
02 Stale business data. Without a low-friction update path, many customers didn't update their addresses at all — leaving the bank with inaccurate records and a reduced ability to communicate reliably.
03 Unnecessary support load. Address changes were generating avoidable calls to customer support — consuming agent time and frustrating customers who expected a digital-first experience.
04 A serious fraud and security risk. Sending sensitive business correspondence — statements, regulatory notices, security alerts — to an outdated address is not just an inconvenience. It exposes businesses to fraud, identity theft, and interception by third parties. For a bank, holding incorrect address data is a compliance and trust failure. This project directly addressed that risk by giving customers a fast, secure way to keep their details current — and giving the bank the confidence that critical communications were reaching the right people.

Behaviour Change

Designing for different choices.

Behaviours we were driving

→ Use the app. Business customers managing their address changes directly through the native or web app — without needing to call or send a form.
→ Keep details current. Customers proactively updating their addresses whenever their business situation changed, rather than deferring indefinitely.

Behaviours we were discouraging

✕ Calling customer support. Routing a routine self-service task through a human agent — expensive for the bank and frustrating for the customer.
✕ Doing nothing. Leaving stale address data in place because the effort to change it outweighed the perceived benefit — a risk to both the customer and the bank.

The Solution

Inline, self-serve, done in minutes.

1

Adding the change capability to the existing view

The first design decision was to add a "Change" link directly to the existing address view — rather than burying the feature in settings. This surfaced the capability where customers already expected to find their address information, reducing discovery friction and making the action feel like a natural extension of what was already there.

2

A new postcode lookup pattern

BNGA had no existing postcode lookup pattern — entering a new address would have required users to fill in every field manually, introducing errors and friction. Working with engineering, we introduced a postcode-first lookup flow as a new pattern for the platform. Users enter their postcode, select from matched addresses, and confirm — dramatically reducing input effort and improving data quality at the point of capture.

3

Content design and copy

Working closely with the UX writer on the team, every screen was written to be clear, direct, and appropriately formal for a business banking context. The language distinguished between address types (registered, trading, mailing) without requiring customers to understand the legal distinctions behind them — translating complexity into simple, actionable choices.

4

Prototyping, testing and iteration

Prototypes were tested with business banking customers across multiple rounds, validating the postcode lookup pattern and the Change link placement. The designs were iterated based on research findings before moving through stakeholder sign-off and into engineering delivery.

The Screens

Mobile journey — two design eras.

Previous design system

Cancara — Lloyds Banking Group rebrand Two years after COBA launched, Lloyds Banking Group rolled out Cancara — a full visual rebrand of its Business Banking product suite. Cancara brought a refined design language: updated typography, a new colour system, and refreshed component patterns — while preserving the underlying interaction architecture. The COBA journey was migrated to Cancara as part of that wider rollout, and the screens below show the same flow reskinned in the new system. The UX logic remained unchanged; what Cancara gave it was a more polished, consistent visual presence across the platform.

Cancara design system — mobile

COBA mobile journey — Cancara design system

Cancara design system — desktop

Measuring Success

Everybody wants to win — here's how we defined it.

Online address changes

01 We tracked the number of address changes completed through the native and web app after release — a direct measure of whether customers adopted the new digital journey over the old offline alternatives.

Customer support call volume

02 We measured the volume of address-related calls to customer support before and after release — a clear signal of whether the self-serve journey was removing the need to call.

The Results

Customers moved online. Calls dropped.

65%

Adoption rate

Of eligible customers used the new digital journey to update their business address — a strong signal that the experience met their expectations.

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Support calls

A significant and measurable drop in address-related calls to customer support — freeing agent capacity and reducing friction for customers.

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Data accuracy

The bank captured up-to-date address records for thousands of business customers — improving the reliability of communications and regulatory data.