Ioana, how did you organise the cross-departmental collaboration?

With tight timelines and budgets, we deliberately set ambitious KPIs to challenge both our core team and the organisation to approach things differently. The dedicated core team was small and structured by key functions. These experts managed their areas’ deliverables while ensuring effective crossfunctional communication. From the beginning, we divided the project scope into manageable, self-organised deliverables and concentrated on outputs rather than administrative tasks. We emphasised transparency, ongoing dialogue, and timely issue resolution.

How did you align the new savings products with customer needs?

As business owner of the funding products at Cembra, our Head of Funding Sales played a pivotal role in the project. This allowed us to leverage his extensive expertise and long-term market knowledge. Together with our Treasurer, we designed a product that is both attractive for our customers as well as the market and aligns with our balance sheet requirements. I strongly believe in creating win-win solutions!

Cembra’s new savings products were developed together with Hypothekarbank Lenzburg. Can you elaborate on that?

Our fundamental aim was to offer a savings product that is intuitive and easy to manage. To do that, we used technology modules from the open banking platform Finstar which belongs to Hypothekarbank Lenzburg. The bank also supports us with services in payment transactions and customer service. This collaboration was crucial to our success. From the start, we worked together as equal partners.

How did the project team overcome the biggest challenges?

Our main challenge was the short timeline, compounded by limited access to supporting resources like for example business analysts and testing teams. Ironically, this constraint helped us to focus on the essentials – prioritising the tools and features that really mattered. Everyone approached the project as if we were running our own small company. This mindset made a huge difference in terms of our collaboration, leading to a highly successful outcome.