ABOUT

Overview/Brief/Challenges
PA Consulting (PA) is the only organisation offering end-to-end innovation. It not only accelerates new growth ideas from concept, through design, development, and to commercial success. It also revitalises organisations, building the leadership, culture, systems and processes to make innovation a reality. With over 4,000 experts, including strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists, PA brings breakthrough technologies and innovative thinking to diverse sectors such as consumer and manufacturing, defence and security, energy and utilities, financial services, government and public services, health and life sciences, and transport.

PA's internal Design Studio consists of a team of 17 people.

Vision for banking. PA's report to inspire and provoke new thought among our retail banking clients and prospects.

PA believes in "the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future". In this vision, retail banks have a vital role to play in helping us to optimise our economic, social, and environmental well-being.

This isn’t purely a moral imperative for retail banks to better serve their employees, society, and the planet. It’s the key to a secured future in a perilous environment – and the way to ensure retail banks deliver ongoing profitability and value to all stakeholders.

With this in mind, PA asked 600 technology and banking leaders their thoughts on what the next decade holds for retail banking. It turns out, the industry could break away decisively from the certainties and assumptions of the past. Considering this, we developed four potential industry scenarios for 2030 using our unique FutureWorlds methodology. These worlds are:

• Centralised Big-tech: The triumph of Silicon Valley sees retail banking disrupted by full-service technology firms originating from outside the banking industry
• Equivalent Evolution: Retail banking markets in most countries are dominated by a relatively small number of full-service incumbent banks offering a wide portfolio of products and services
• Fragmented Finance: A vibrant, innovative ecosystem sees the provision of retail banking increasingly shaped by specialised technology firms originating outside traditional banking
• Disparate Domination: Specialised incumbent banks, offering one or few niche products or services outperform their rivals and now dominate the retail banking space.

The challenge was to bring these worlds to life, and grab the attention of our C-suite audience.

Strategy/Process
PA's purpose statement is 'We believe in the power of innovation to build a positive human future'. This is a point of difference for the brand that is embedded in the culture — and frequently the reason people give for choosing to work at PA over one of our competitors. It felt right therefore to create an illustration style that coveys a human touch as well as the diversity of thought and experience that we celebrate at PA.

Lilian Darmono's style felt like the perfect complement for this project. And Lilian's style is also one that brings warmth and makes great use of the colour found in our visual identity's supporting colour palette, to balance the sometimes 'dry' expectation of Financial Services as a sector.

Outcomes/Results
A large part of the challenge was to convince the client that illustration is best used in conjunction with the text — to engage, to provide analogous context, and help the audience digest the complex ideas within the report. It can never be a replacement for, or summation of, the text itself.

In this case we devised a system of graphical shapes to represent the variety of players: from incumbent financial giants, to tech start-up disruptors. The 'smile in the mind' moments are there for the reader to discover and explore as an accomplainment to the story related in the report.

The report has been exceptionally well received by the business and with clients.

• The design helped with report advocacy, with consultants proudly sharing the on LinkedIn.
• Launched as a multichannel marketing campaign, in under two months it resulted in: 300 high-quality marketing qualified leads (MQLs); 1,175 landing page views; and press coverage in leading publications within target industries/geographies: NBT, Borsen, FinansWatch, Consultancy UK.