The financial services industry may be considered a laggard in innovation compared to other industries such as commerce or transportation. Many inherent factors negatively impact a bank’s overall ability to innovate. These include:

• Product-centric and siloed structures
• Constraints arising from annual budgeting cycles
• Dependency on legacy systems
• Risk culture and risk aversion

In this paper, we look at the potential of design thinking to help financial institutions become more innovative and proposing a way forward to embed this methodology effectively within a financial services organization.