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The Beginning

I was brought onto the Central Pacific Bank (CPB) team by Kevin Dahlstrom (@camp4), CPB’s CMO at the time, and he had a vision to bring better banking to all Americans. Swell began as an island inspired sub-brand of CPB that would focus on the mainland market, but would deliver CPB’s good banking ethos and trademark customer service. Early data showed that mainland banking customers did not feel well serviced by the big four (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi), and small banks and credit unions often struggle to bring quality technology to their customers. 

Building the Brand 

Brand Part I 

Swell was kicked off with a branding exercise conducted by the bank’s agency partner at the time. The original brand was rooted in Hawaiian-inspired elements and a color palette that coordinated with the parent CPB brand. 

Mobile app concepts came shortly after preliminary brand elements were decided on. The team really wanted good juju to be part of this brand and product experience, and many value propositions were designed and tested as part of the business exploration. Early concepts included features that gave back to the earth and community at large. The business hypothesis at this time was that banking customers wanted to feel their bank left a good imprint in their community and cared about the environment. 

Brand Part II

The business stakeholders invested heavily in testing a wide variety of concepts. Within a few months, it became clear that leaning on island culture as a core part of the brand wouldn’t resonate with the mainland consumer. Regulatory limitations also became immensely more clear in that CPB would not be able to operate in the mainland without distracting from their already successful business in Hawaii. Two major decisions were made based on this information: 

• Swell would need a new brand concept that was completely separate from CPB

• Swell would need to spin out of from the bank as it’s own independent startup business

• Swell needed to find a more compelling differentiation from CPB and other existing neobanks

While I didn’t have much of a role in the business spinoff, I did contribute to the next iteration of the brand quite a lot. Kevin really wanted a brand that would stand out from the banking crowd and gave our agency partner some very loose guidance to create something that would stand out. 

They sent back to us many concepts, and a base direction was chosen. 

Brand Part III

By this time, it was decided to part ways with the agency and design became wholly my responsibility. On taking the base brand direction that included a logo, color palette and marketing website template into a definitive digital direction, several problems were spotted.

• The color palette had become too similar to most competitors in the space with a neon green that could be easily confused and a red that too often looked like a warning.  They were also extremely difficult to use within accessibility guidelines.

• The brand still lacked supporting visual elements. 

I went back to the drawing board with the existing color palette and pushed many variations under a stress test to make sure they were stand out in a crowd and could be easily used in several combinations and remain compliant with accessibility standards. The Swell lemon-lime and raspberry colors were born.

Separately, I worked closely with a contract designer to come up with a more well defined visual language that leveraged custom, dynamic vector illustrations, and threads and swoops to pull elements together. 

Once these elements were built, the time came to apply them in real world applications including, but not limited to, the mobile app, marketing website, merch, emails and social media. 

Building the Business & Mobile App

All the while the brand was being built, mobile app concepts and prototypes were being heavily leveraged and tested. 

Kevin’s core mission was to build a financial business that would improve people’s lives. The primary product the team focused on was a checking account that would work hard for its users, but we also explored including crypto, a line of credit account and an investment piece. All of these concepts received varying levels and types of testing, both by business stakeholders and the product team. The product team regularly reached out to people we believed could fit the target and put anything from general concepts to screens and prototypes in front of them for feedback. 

Swell Cash & Rate Tracker

One of the main concepts to kick the business off became Swell Cash, a checking account that offered a high APY for users who accomplished a set number of criteria. While this was not a new idea in the world of checking accounts, we knew that while many banks offered this type of account, no one did it in a way that made it clear to the user whether they were on track to complete the criteria or not. Because transparency is a core value of the team, we set out to create a visual tracker to a) let the user know where they stood and b) make it clear how much they had left to do to secure the high APY each month. 

Thus, the Rate Tracker was born. Three small rings on the home screen would give the user a quick snapshot of their status. They could then tap in to view detailed activity and historical information. 

Swell Credit

Data suggested there was a voracious appetite for credit in America, so we also dove head first into conceptualizing, prototyping and testing a line of credit that would work seamlessly with Swell Cash. Swell Credit allowed us to offer a credit card alternative that would differentiate us from nearly all the other neobanks on the market. 

In early testing, we discovered that one of the biggest challenges to this concept was that most people were very familiar with credit cards, but many did not have much familiarity with lines of credit. To add to that, credit cards are ubiquitous and people’s first impressions of Swell Credit was that it was, in fact, a credit card. We needed to be sure that Swell Credit was marketed in a way that made it very clear that it was different from a credit card. We also needed to provide insight and suggestions on how it could be well used. 

Sign Up Flow

It’s no secret that customer acquisition is an important part of any business, but something unique to finance is the level of security, regulation, and fraud prevention required to protect the business from bad actors. While we knew that the sign up flow would be cumbersome, we were determined to make the experience feel as simple and seamless as possible. 

A trademark pattern we used throughout was to put put as few actions on a screen as possible. In many of the sign up flow screens, only one field exists at a time to reduce cognitive load as much as possible. 

This flow was extensively tested in both Figma prototype form and with the live app. At the end of testing sessions, we regularly heard feedback from users that said even though they realized a lot was being asked of them, the process felt very simple. 

Ready, Set, Launch

In summer of 2022, the app hit the App Store and Google Play. Because new technology always needs to be extensively tested, we took a very slow approach to inviting users onto the production app. The product team started with employees and partners, and we took turns leading concierge sessions that were modeled partially like a user test, but also included people to help with technical troubleshooting as needed. With this method we were able to quickly iterate and make improvements as we received the feedback. 

Conclusion

As of the publishing of this case study, Swell still has limited availability in the U.S., and is available on an invite-only basis. The Swell team is looking forward to continued learning opportunities and iteration! 

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