Last August, Wealth & Finance International, a quarterly publication that delivers high-quality informative and up-to-the-minute global business content, announced Z1 as the Best International Digital Product Studio of 2023.
This recognition dives throughout our history as a digital product studio. Since our inception in 2015, we have worked on almost 200 products across different industries, but we have dedicated a particular focus on FinTech. Not only because of the number of projects we’ve developed in this field, which ascends to about 20 but because of their direct impact on society and the responsibility that it entails.
To comprehend the dimensions of these types of projects, we must understand the profile of our FinTech partners. We are talking about brilliant professionals with years of experience in finance who, at a certain point in their careers, come across processes that can be improved or problems that current tools do not solve, and they know that they have to create a new solution.
To comprehend the dimensions of our FinTech projects, we must understand the profile of our partners: brilliant professionals with years of experience in finance who knew they had to create new solutions.
For instance, Chip Castille with a background in running retirement strategies for Black Rock Investments, with whom we crafted Lasso to democratize financial planning and advise, Dalal AlRayes, with a vast background in Business Administration, co-founder of the startup Spare, with whom we crafted an app to help Kuwaitis be more financially aware, or Stuart Winchester, who led Better.com's insurance vertical, with whom we built Marble from the ground up, the first digital wallet and rewards program for policy holders, to name a few.
No one better than them, highly skilled finance professionals, can spot new business opportunities in such a specialized market. No one better than Z1 can bring these new products they’ve envisioned to the market. True teamwork in action.
How to create top-notch FinTech digital experiences
One of our prime objectives as a digital studio is to take the complexity of designing and building software and simplify it to ensure guidance and control through predictable and iterative phases.
Our duty as product professionals is to make FinTech apps, websites and web apps not only beautiful and, of course, reliable but also easy to understand and use for a broad audience.
As famous economist and writer Ha-Joon Chang expressed: Most people find the economy and finance complicated, but it’s not how it should be. We don’t want to lay anybody off with FinTech innovations; we don’t want to make finance even more complex for people who may not be familiar with new technologies but the other way around: make it more accessible than ever.
Whether we like it or not, finance is intertwined in everybody’s lives. Our duty as product professionals is to make FinTech apps, websites and web apps not only beautiful and, of course, reliable but also easy to understand and use for a broad audience.
Héctor Giner, Z1's CEO, also highlights the importance of design when you want to build trust with clients. "If your design is not at a very good level, users probably won’t trust your platform. So having an award in this regard from external peers, it's validation that even in an industry like FinTech, where you could assume that solving a problem is the only important thing, doing that extra effort designing every detail is tremendously helpful to succeed.”
Finance is a social issue
Our FinTech partners have validated that Z1 has the proper mix of design and technology skills to create the distinctive user experiences they were looking for when creating their products. Therefore, this Wealth & Finance International award is also for them.
“It’s a huge responsibility to create products people can trust in any area, and this responsibility increases exponentially within the finance world.”
Héctor Giner, Z1's CEO and Cofounder.
“It’s a huge responsibility to create products people can trust in any area, and this responsibility increases exponentially within the finance world. We’d love to dedicate this recognition to all the fabulous people behind Marble, Seeds, Spare, Conway Wealth, Lasso, Makara, Foyer, Bolt and many others”, declared Héctor. “To their founders, who weren’t afraid to innovate, wanted to empower people and offer new ways to interact with their finances, and trusted Z1 to bring their vision to life. And to our team of digital experts, who put all their creativity and passion into crafting the best possible digital experiences in each of these FinTech products. This award is for you all.”
