What We Learned from Releasing Mortgages in Sweden and Norway
Over the past 3 years we have worked on building and releasing mortgage products. Sweden was first out and Norway came next. Both projects are with the same team, in the same organisation, but were approached in very different ways. The people involved tried it, learned from that first try and did things differently the second time. I am writing down these learnings to carry them with me in my future projects, as well as hopefully spreading that knowledge to other people.
Seeing the whole customer journey
When we started the journey in Sweden, we didn’t have any prior knowledge about mortgages. Especially rules and processes around approval and payout. We focused on simplifying the customer journey as an application form, a credit report, a house valuation report and a long list of legal documents. After 6 months we finalised these parts and were about to release the product. But we kept getting new requirements such as “We just need to add an approval process as well, then we can release it”. So after another 3 months later, way off plan, we finally released the product.
The main learning here is that we should have planned our work starting from “customer reading our mortgage offering” to “customer receiving the mortgage payout”, NOT from “customer opening application form” to “customer submitting application”. It was more complicated than we thought, and we didn’t know enough when we started out.
But we took that learning and did the second iteration differently. We asked a Norwegian mortgage specialist to show us the best product in Norway. We asked the Norwegian credit operations team at Nordnet to describe how they plan and perform their daily work. When we started development, we already had an idea about the whole customer journey. There were no new requirements or comments surprising us as we were about to release the product in Norway.
Quick feedback circle and regular demos
When we were working on the mortgage product in Sweden, we only talked to the Swedish branch and people from the Swedish credit operations at the beginning and at the end of the project. Nothing in between. This was another reason why we received a lot of new requirements and comments just as we were about to release.
The learning from this is that we should have had a quick feedback circle.
So in the next iteration we had weekly demo and feedback sessions with the Norwegian branch and people from the Norwegian credit operations:
- We started with demoing what had been done last week, so all the stakeholders could see the progress.
- We discussed together what should be the next step, so all the stakeholders knew what to expect next week and could help prioritise.
- Comments and discussions would come up and get solved.
- Not only Tech gave demos, we also got demos such as how the contract between Nordnet and the tax authorities worked.
Releasing it firstly to customers who showed interest
When Tesla launched its Model 3, they initially released the product to employees and existing customers. By doing the same, we have the opportunity to receive early feedback on the application form and make necessary adjustments before launching to all the customers.
When we released the mortgage in Sweden, we released it to 5% of random customers. We had to wait for a couple of weeks to even get our first application, and then it took even longer to solve the issues we found and pay out that mortgage.
In our second approach, we released the mortgage in Norway to customers who registered interest on our website. We got our first application within a day and paid it out in 2 weeks. Feedback was much faster, making it so much easier to fix and tweak the code.
In conclusion
Deploying a product can be a complex process with many moving parts. Remember to stay customer-focused throughout the process, solicit feedback early and often, and continuously iterate based on that feedback. With these practices in place, you’ll be well on your way to delivering valuable products that delight your customers with a smiling project team.
Thank you Lena Wiberg for showing me how fun and simple to write a blog and giving all the practical tips.
