Product Validation
/ Retirement Essentials
FintechRetirement Essentials is an Australian fintech startup founded in 2017. Their mission is to support everyday Australians who have traditionally been ignored or underserviced by the financial services industry.
/ OPPORTUNITY
Retirement Essentials engaged DIJGTAL to help create their first go-to-market product. The founding team had a lot of great ideas based on decades of industry experience, but needed assistance in validating and designing their concepts.
/ Approach
We began by iteratively designing concepts and validating them with potential customers. This research led us to conclude that Retirement Essentials should start by offering a service to help retirees apply for their Age Pension.
This outcome was a surprise, based on unexpected but conclusive data. In our interviews with customers, there was nothing we heard about more consistently than the pain, anxiety and frustration they felt when going through Centrelink’s application process.
It was discovered that the whole process was complicated, confusing and needlessly repetitive in parts. Someone applying for the Age Pension would be met with anywhere between 150-600 questions to answer across multiple forms. Then, once they had arrived at Centrelink for their appointment, if something was found to be filled in incorrectly, they would have to go away, fill in a new form and come back again! People were feeling belittled, making for a very unpleasant experience.
Once the strategic direction had been established, we worked with Retirement Essentials, and their development partner SuperEd, to design and build their Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and get it to market.
/ Outcome
The first version of Retirement Essentials’ Age Pension service was released in February 2018. It continues to gain traction, and helps more Australian retirees every week.
