Devora
Vantage — Wealth management

Moving a private bank's clients onto their phones

A wealth app for clients who had never used one — built to the security bar of an institution and the interface bar of a consumer product.

Platforms

iOS · Android

Duration

26 weeks

Delivered

2024

Start something similar
Increase in mobile-first accounts
41%Increase in mobile-first accounts
Type II, passed first audit
SOC 2Type II, passed first audit
Reduction in advisor call volume
-73%Reduction in advisor call volume
Median onboarding time
8 minMedian onboarding time
The problem

What we were handed.

Vantage's clients are older, wealthy and sceptical of anything that puts their portfolio behind a screen lock. The bank's compliance position made almost every consumer convenience — biometric login, push notifications with balances, local caching — a negotiation. The previous vendor had spent fourteen months without shipping.
Native iOSNative AndroidBackend & APIsOngoing engineering
The approach

Four decisions that mattered.

  1. 01

    Started with the compliance team, not the design team. We wrote the threat model first, then designed only interactions that could survive it, which removed nine months of later rework.

  2. 02

    Built secure-enclave biometric sessions with a hardware-backed key, so Face ID unlocks the app without a balance ever touching disk unencrypted.

  3. 03

    Designed at a larger base type size with a fully tested Dynamic Type ladder up to the accessibility sizes — the client base needs it, and the audit rewarded it.

  4. 04

    Replaced the routine 'what is my balance' advisor call with a glanceable widget and a notification policy the compliance team wrote with us.

Built with

  • Swift
  • Kotlin
  • Secure Enclave
  • OAuth 2.1
  • AWS
The outcome

Where it landed.

Vantage passed its SOC 2 Type II audit on the first attempt with no findings against the mobile application. Mobile-first account activity rose 41% in the first year, and advisor call volume for routine balance enquiries fell by nearly three quarters — freeing the advisory team for the conversations that actually generate fees.

The first vendor treated our compliance requirements as an obstacle. Devora treated them as the specification. That is the whole difference.

Eleanor WhitfieldChief Digital Officer, Vantage
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