In the financial sector, we like to plan things thoroughly. And for good reason.. There’s a lot at stake. Stability, compliance, customer trust. It’s not something you just rush through.
But sometimes, that same planning culture becomes the reason nothing moves. Large transformation initiatives can take years to scope, align, and approve. By the time the wheels start turning, customer expectations may already have changed, or someone else has launched something better.
That’s why I believe more in pilots than PowerPoints.
At Trifork, we call it the speedboat approach. Small, fast-moving projects with a clear goal, a dedicated team, and a short timeline, typically around 6 to 12 weeks. It’s not about cutting corners, but about proving direction before you commit the whole ship.
The best part is that you don’t have to wait until everything is perfectly aligned. You just need the right people, a clear problem, and a willingness to learn.
Read more about our speedboat approach here.
Jyske Bank’s onboarding journey
Read the full case here.
A good example is our collaboration with Jyske Bank.
They wanted to improve their onboarding flow with efficiency in mind, but also to create a more welcoming experience for new customers. The existing process relied on email threads, PDFs, and lots of manual steps. It worked, but it didn’t exactly feel digital or personal.
Rather than trying to overhaul everything at once, we kicked things off with a 14-day design sprint. Together with the team from Jyske Bank, we mapped out pain points, tested ideas, and prototyped new flows. In other words, we launched a speedboat.
From there, we went straight into development – keeping the scope focused on new private customers first. The aim wasn’t to solve everything at once. It was to build a real, working version of a better onboarding flow and learn from it.
Within six months, we had gone from the first workshop to a live platform. And we’re still building on it today.
This approach helped the bank:
- Solving one clear problem first
- Enabled fast decisions and close collaboration
- Simplified the most important user flows
- Built a scalable onboarding foundation
Pilots build confidence
When you launch a pilot, you’re not just building a feature — you’re building confidence. Confidence that the idea works. That the tech fits. That the users respond. That the team can deliver.
This matters more than any 5-year roadmap ever could.
Once you’ve shown that something works in a short timeframe, it becomes much easier to align the broader organisation. You’re not debating hypotheticals, you’re responding to real results.
So – what’s the first speedboat you could launch?
Every bank and pension provider I talk to is sitting on a list of ideas. Some of them are stuck behind strategy decks and budget discussions. But a few of them are perfect for a speedboat.
Piloting an AI assistant to support frontline advisors? Automating a manual KYC or credit approval process? Injecting an AI-based task into an existing workflow?
It doesn’t have to be perfect to get started. You don’t need to commit to a multi-year program. Just commit to getting something real into users’ hands in 5–8 weeks. Learn from it. Build on it. And move forward smarter.
That’s how change starts.
This is something we at Trifork have been lucky to experience with our customers many times by now – maybe we could help you too? And if not, I hope this post has inspired you to take your own steps towards change today.
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