Three functions, one launch date.

The first proprietary app for the highest-income segment of Latin America’s largest bank.

Role: Product Manager for the launch
Organization: Itaú Private Bank
Scope: Business prioritization, Design System, development, launch
Result: +9% promoters in 10 weeks

01 Context

A segment with no product of its own.

The highest-income segment of the largest bank in Latin America had no app of its own. Its clients used the retail product, on a relationship that was anything but retail.

In private banking the interface is rarely the relationship. Clients are served by people, over years. But the absence of a digital product still says something, every day, to a client who runs the rest of their life from a phone.

02 The launch

Orchestration against a fixed date.

I acted as Product Manager for the launch. The work was orchestration: business, design and technology pointed at a single customer experience, with a date that would not move.

Three things had to land together: features personalized for the segment, full adaptation to the bank’s new Design System, and the entire technology backlog delivered before launch. Product management here was mostly sequencing, and holding all three to the same clock.

Two phones showing the Itaú Private Bank app home screen in light and dark themes. — The home, in both themes. The segment’s first proprietary product.

Results

+9%

promoters in the first 10 weeks after launch

03 Personalized for the segment

What “personalized for the segment” meant in practice.

Not a skin. The decisions that mattered were about what a high-net-worth client should reach without asking, and what should stay one deliberate step away.

The pre-authentication screen with shortcuts for transfers, payments, statement and cards. — Before sign-in: the actions used most, one tap from the lock screen.

The home shortcuts exploded away from the screen, including an add-shortcut tile. — Shortcuts are the client’s to arrange, including the one that adds another.

The menu with an editable highlights area above the full product list. — The menu, editable: highlights the client sets, products underneath.

The statement screen with search, filters and recent entries. — Statement, with search and filters over recent and future entries.

Four screens of the messages area, split into conversations, notifications and pending items. — Messages split three ways: conversations, notifications, and what still needs the client’s action.

04 The bet

Adopting the Design System while building.

The bet that paid off later

A segment product is the easiest place in a bank to justify a bespoke interface, and the most expensive place to maintain one. Adopting the new Design System while we were still building is what kept the app cheap to change afterwards.

05 How I ran it

A date that would not move is a design constraint.

I was the Product Manager for this launch. On a launch with a fixed date, most of the work is deciding what gets cut. These are the calls that decided what did not.

I pointed three areas at one description of the experience

Business, design and technology worked against a single written description of what the client would get, instead of three parallel plans. Most launch failures at this scale are not build failures. They are three teams optimizing different definitions of done.
I took on the new Design System while we were still building

A segment product is the easiest place in a bank to justify a bespoke interface and the most expensive place to maintain one. Adopting the bank's new Design System during the build cost us time then and is the reason the app stayed cheap to change afterwards.
I framed personalization as reach, not as decoration

I asked the team a question with an answer: what should a Private client reach without having to ask for it, and what should stay one deliberate step away. That is a question about hierarchy. Asking instead what feels premium is a question nobody can settle.
I treated the technology backlog as the launch schedule

With the date fixed, the order in which we delivered the backlog was the real design of the launch. What ships first is an experience decision long before it is a delivery one.

The hard part was never the deadline. It was that the same product had to feel made for this segment and still behave like part of the bank, and those two pull in opposite directions on almost every screen.

Next · 02 · Scale

One card, +73%.

01 · Relationships

Eleven ways to be a client.