How a bank in Kazakhstan launched non-financial services for businesses and who helped them

Konstantin Kolotov, Director of the Fintech Division at red_mad_robot

Client: A major bank in Kazakhstan
Task: Launch a new product for the market and increase its customer base
The case is under NDA — we cannot name the bank, but here are a few details to give you an idea:

— It was among the top 10 banks in Kazakhstan according to Forbes in 2020
— It was recognized as one of the best banks for business in Kazakhstan based on user reviews and ratings.

In 2021, when the bank approached us, it was successfully competing with other banks in Kazakhstan on banking products: loans, cards, deposits, and accounts for individuals. It was looking for ways to improve its position in bank rankings and increase its customer base. The bank came up with a solution — to penetrate the small and medium-sized business (SMB) market more deeply.

The bank wanted to provide not only financial services — transfers and payments, settlement accounts. Competitors were already doing this. The client's team planned to go further and launch non-financial services (NFS): online accounting, business registration, electronic document management, legal consultations, employee search, and so on.

The list of online banking services in Kazakhstan is much narrower than in Russia. «Tochka», «Tinkoff», «Modulbank», «Delobank» have launched an ecosystem for entrepreneurs — any business-related question can be resolved in the app. In Kazakhstan, this niche was free.

Kazakh banks helped clients with accounting and document management. All other business services had to be found independently.

Ksenia Zemskova, Director of Projects for the Fintech Portfolio at red_mad_robot

The bank wanted to increase its SMB customer base and launch a new product that would provide comprehensive solutions for running a business and allow solving all routine tasks in one app.

The hypothesis was simple — if we create such an app with useful services for SMBs, the customer base will grow, and the bank will outperform competitors. And move closer to its strategic goal — to become No. 1 for entrepreneurs in Kazakhstan.

Problem: to understand which services entrepreneurs need and how to launch them to the market.

The client was developing financial services independently. And began forming hypotheses for launching non-financial services. But quickly realized that it did not know for sure which services customers needed, in what sequence to develop them, and how to create an MVP that would most accurately meet the needs of entrepreneurs.

The bank was looking for a digital partner who could quickly test hypotheses and start developing NFS. Such a partner became red_mad_robot.

Solution: to test the bank's hypotheses, create a roadmap for NFS, and launch services with the highest priority for customers and the business.

The bank assembled its own backlog of non-financial services, which became our starting point. We challenged it, added hypotheses from our research, and went to test.

Our task was to prioritize hypotheses from the backlog and create a development roadmap: which services to create first and why. The entire research took a month.

We conducted research in four stages:

1. Surveyed 150+ entrepreneurs with an annual turnover of no more than 100 million tenge. The most popular request from them was for information. This is a news service about changes in legislation affecting a specific entrepreneur's business. Audience needs are only part of the research. To create a demanded MVP that meets customer needs and solves business tasks, it is necessary to take these tasks into account.
2. Held a workshop with the bank's top management and prioritized services at the business level. Evaluated by four criteria:

— attracting new customers
— increasing Retention
— increasing revenue from banking products
— revenue from selling the service by subscription.

The favorite changed — online accounting came out on top.

From a business perspective, the prioritization was different. Information received a low score — the impact of other services was much higher.

3. Studied the Russian online banking market and the experience of top banks in the RF. It was important to track the releases of non-financial services and understand which functions were released first.
Result — we understood that banks primarily release business registration, online accounting, financial analytics, and information. This confirmed that we had prioritized the services correctly.
4. Another prioritization — from the development perspective. It was necessary to understand which services were easier and faster to implement.

We built a roadmap for NFS and defended the service backlog.

To start working, we had to take the most important step — to defend the research results and the service backlog at the bank's board of directors.

For this, we fully calculated the entire economics of the project:

— development costs
— the number of potential users of non-financial services — existing bank customers and new ones who became customers thanks to these services
— stimulation of transactional income — it consists of payment of tax payments and integration with the bank's financial products
— impact on Retention (customer retention) and NPS (a measure of how satisfied users are with the product).

As a result, the defense was successful, the bank's business approved the implementation of the project and the roadmap for a year and a half.

The result of four scoring sessions, which helped us determine which services to take into work first. Goal No. 1 — online accounting. But the first service we made for the bank was opening a settlement account.
We launched the main entry point to the bank for entrepreneurs in the mobile app. This entry point is opening a settlement account. Without it, entrepreneurs cannot conduct business in the bank and use other services. The bank already had a successful online platform on the web for this, and it was obvious that it needed to be created in the mobile app. Top banks in Kazakhstan already had such a service, the client only had it in the web version.

We began designing and developing the opening of a settlement account in parallel with the research on non-financial services. Each service acted as a separate module during design — this allowed for independent releases, so that changes in them were isolated from the main functionality.



We assembled the target scenario. The task was to speed up account opening so that the user spent no more than two minutes on it. For this, we added tax data verification and the ability to sign the application online.

Online Accounting

If opening a settlement account is a story about development and release, then online accounting is a full-fledged product. And before integrating it into the bank's app, it was necessary to conduct tests and launch.

Where to start — with automated accounting or an outsourced accountant.

We conducted additional research to understand the demand for an outsourced accountant — this service met more SMB needs at the start. But its development required more time. It would have been necessary:

— to figure out how to make the service in accordance with the legislation of Kazakhstan — the bank is not allowed to provide accounting consultations
— hire accountants or find partners
— ensure a communication channel between entrepreneurs and accountants.

We assumed that competitors might be working on an accounting service in parallel during this time, and therefore did not want to fall behind. In the entrepreneur survey, automated accounting was higher, and its potential release was simpler. In the end, we decided to release it.

We started with the most popular and simple tax system — USN, or simplified tax system. In the first release, we made:

— onboarding
— notifications about upcoming tax events
— employee directory
— automated calculation and payment of taxes and contributions — for oneself and employees
— history of tax and contribution payments.

In the bank's app, you can add employees and see which taxes, for whom, and why need to be paid.

An important function for entrepreneurs is the warning about tax payment deadlines, which we placed on the main screen of the app. If the deadline is missed, the screen will turn red.

In subsequent releases, we planned to add primary documentation: acts of completed work, invoices, outsourced accountant services, and financial consultant services.

What was the result
We came up with a concept and a roadmap for launching non-financial services. In early 2022, we successfully launched two of them — opening a settlement account in the mobile app and online accounting.

We helped the client increase its customer base. In just the first month after the release, even without significant investments in service promotion, we achieved excellent results that fully corresponded to the developed business case.

We released convenient products to the market. The settlement account registration scenario was the fastest among analogs in Kazakhstan. And at the time of the first release, more than 500 people used the online accounting service.

We formed a backlog of remaining services for a comprehensive solution to entrepreneurs' tasks: information, counterparty verification, document builder, electronic document management, tenders, and procurement.

We once again confirmed that a partnership approach to working with the client is a successful path. We not only help determine the product concept and optimal launch format, but also test hypotheses, research the audience and market, and think through and design services. Because the client's point of competition lies precisely in the synthesis of business tasks, technologies, and user needs.