Seven-market onboarding

01 / Context

The product situation.

Sycamore was expanding lending and investment products across seven African markets. Each market introduced different identity, KYC and authentication expectations, while the business needed a simpler journey that converted more eligible customers.

02 / Problem

What needed to change.

A single undifferentiated onboarding flow created avoidable friction across markets. Customers encountered steps and authentication patterns that did not always match local requirements, contributing to abandonment and weaker downstream adoption.

03 / My responsibility

What I personally owned.

• Owned the onboarding and KYC optimisation roadmap across seven markets.
• Translated local compliance requirements into reusable product rules and market-specific journeys.
• Designed experiments and used product analytics to prioritise conversion improvements.
• Coordinated design, engineering, compliance, growth and operations through rollout.

04 / Research and evidence

How I reduced uncertainty.

• Analysed Mixpanel and Google Analytics funnels to locate high-friction steps and churn patterns.
• Combined support themes, stakeholder feedback and market-specific KYC requirements.
• Ran A/B tests across onboarding, authentication and retention interventions.

05 / Constraints

The boundaries were real.

• Seven markets with different identity documents, KYC rules and operating partners.
• Conversion improvements could not weaken AML, fraud or authentication controls.
• The team needed reusable components without erasing legitimate local differences.

06 / Decisions and trade-offs

The choices I made.

• Separated common onboarding foundations from configurable market-specific rules.
• Prioritised the highest-friction funnel steps instead of redesigning every screen at once.
• Used progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load while retaining required compliance information.

07 / Delivery and collaboration

How the work moved.

I maintained the cross-market roadmap, defined acceptance criteria, aligned compliance and engineering on reusable rules, and partnered with growth on controlled experiments. Analytics informed iteration after each release rather than treating launch as the finish line.

08 / Results

What the work enabled.

• 12% increase in onboarding conversion
• 20% improvement in customer retention
• 25% increase in feature adoption
• 25% improvement in authentication success

09 / What I learned

The judgement I carried forward.

Multi-market products should standardise the product foundation, not every customer journey. Configurable rules let the team move faster while respecting local trust and compliance requirements.