PAN didn't see it, but the dealership knew. · Banco PAN

Context

Banco PAN wanted to become a digital leader in used vehicle financing, Brazil's largest market in this category.

The existing digital product treated financing as a linear, bureaucratic process. In reality, what happened on the dealership lot was completely different from what the system assumed.

I joined as the designer responsible for the project and went on to lead 2 designers from the consultancy (Fjord/Accenture). I led the product alongside 2 PMs, 1 GPM and commercial leadership. The research and strategic framework came from the work I led internally and directly informed the To-Be journey that was implemented.

Research

I started with a CSD matrix to make everything we already knew explicit and map out what we needed to validate. From there, I structured the research into two tracks.

Qualitative: 29 in-person interviews with dealership salespeople, PAN financing representatives and managers in São Paulo, Baixada Santista and the Northeast.

Quantitative: a survey sent to 7 thousand dealers, with 170 valid responses in the first round. In the second round, 155 participants, including 84 dealers and 46 financing representatives from across the country. Another 25 interviews between February and March 2019.

Total: more than 180 participants across qualitative and quantitative research.

From reach to conversations

Quantitative and qualitative research

Dealers reached by the survey0

Valid responses in round 10

Participants in round 2Including 84 dealers and 46 operators0

In-person interviews0

Additional interviewsFebruary and March 20190

Less than 3% of the dealers reached answered in the first round.

Key findings

Empowering the front line

The most important finding: financing representatives who could negotiate weak applications secured PAN's place at the dealership. The digital product needed to amplify that ability, not replace it. One dealer summed up the alternative: 'The Santander representative today is a puppet.'

Credit approval perceptions were killing conversion

Dealers estimated that PAN approved 30 to 40% of applications. Santander? 80 to 90%. The problem wasn't the actual rate, but the accuracy of the financing calculator. Adding fields like income and occupation type wouldn't be a pain point as long as it improved the perceived approval rate.

50% of the day lost to loan finalization

Financing representatives said operational tasks took up half their workday. Some even paid couriers out of pocket to send document packages. Digital loan finalization was seen as transformative.

CPF is at the center of everything

When prioritizing fields, CPF/CNPJ consistently ranked at the top for dealers and financing representatives. It's the first piece of information collected, unlocks the financing calculation and connects the entire journey. That determined how the flow was reorganized.

Approval rate as dealers perceived it

How much each bank would approve, as estimated by the people selling

Banco PAN30–40%

Santander80–90%

The problem wasn't the real rate, it was how accurate the simulator was.

Half of the operators' day went into paperwork

Time attributed to operational tasks

Decision

With more than 180 participants and 9 hypotheses prioritized using a Likert scale, the direction was clear: data and market intelligence first, inventory management next, peripheral features last.

The To-Be journey was organized into 5 phases: Discover, Research and Choose, Learn and Decide, Negotiate and Buy, and Evolve. With 9 service concepts covering the entire ecosystem: dealer, financing representative, sales team, and bank.

The redesign was split into two tracks. New Beetle focused on simplifying operations: insurance waiver, electronic inspection report, digital loan finalization, checkout. Mad Max focused on new value: smart inventory, preliminary loan quotes, recording integration in NPV.

Before

A linear, bureaucratic flow designed for the bank. Dealers worked through WhatsApp, OLX, and suppliers. The bank's system was just one more tool, and not the most important one.

After

A product built to empower frontline financing representatives. A consolidated dashboard with financed volume, approval rate, and pipeline. Loan quotes tailored to each user profile. Integrated digital loan finalization.

The prototype below shows the loan quote flow designed at the time. The product live today at veiculos.bancopan.com.br grew out of this work.

Six years later, I reimagined the experience through the lens I have today.

Impact

The product live today at veiculos.bancopan.com.br grew out of this work. A discovery effort with more than 180 participants, in-person fieldwork across multiple regions, and data-driven hypothesis prioritization that became a real product.

This was the most rigorous discovery work I've led to date. The service map with 9 concepts served an essential purpose: aligning the bank, sales team, and dealers around a shared vision of what digital meant for PAN.

Research scale

180+

participants across qualitative and quantitative research

in-person qualitative interviews

dealers reached through the survey

service concepts mapped

To-Be journey phases

ecosystem actors mapped

Lessons learned

In B2B2C products, the user you see isn't the only one who matters, and sometimes isn't even the main one. The system was designed around the bank's workflow. But on the dealership lot, we discovered that dealers operated in a world of WhatsApp, OLX, and trusted suppliers.

The finding about frontline empowerment had the greatest impact on the product. The PAN financing representative who negotiated and fought for applications was the real competitive advantage. The digital product needed to amplify that dynamic, not automate it to the point of eliminating it.