Build / Mobile development
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Bolero

Future-proofing Belgium’s top investment app.

Bolero is the online stock market platform of KBC group subsidiary KBC Securities, Belgium's largest stockbrokers. Since 1999, Bolero has offered inexpensive solutions to private investors who want to manage their own online portfolios. We helped Bolero reimagine its mobile experience, boosting UX, aligning with user needs, and securing its leadership position in a shifting landscape.

Tech
  • Android
  • iOS
  • Angular
  • PHP

Challenge

Bolero is KBC Bank's trading platform. Since its inception, more than 200,000 investors have already joined the platform. In recent years, however, the market has changed significantly following the influx of young investors, fuelled by the emergence of neo-brokers that charge minimal fees and trends such as FIRE, Wall Street bets, and so on. New technology has also paved the way for new opportunities that can take the Bolero app to the next level. Bolero thus decided to take a closer look at its existing platform and overhaul it to secure KBC-Bolero’s market leadership for the next few years.

The solution

We worked closely with Bolero to rebuild their mobile trading experience from the ground up, ensuring a seamless fit with investor needs and business goals.

  • Strategic workshops and co-creation sessions to define a shared product vision
  • In-depth research: user interviews, competitive benchmarking, and trend analysis
  • Fully redesigned mobile app, developed natively in SwiftUI (iOS) and Jetpack Compose (Android)
  • Component library co-created with the KBC
  • Design team for future scalability
  • Functional enhancements focused on performance, usability, and investor engagement
  • Continued collaboration on long-term app maintenance and iteration

Crafting a future-proof mobile app

icapps provided comprehensive guidance to Bolero in developing a forward-looking mobile app systematically. This included conducting interviews with users, stakeholders, and external experts, analyzing the current platform, benchmarking competition, and researching consumer and industry trends.

Collaborative co-creation workshops with the Bolero team ensured a shared product vision and stakeholder alignment. A tangible app outline was then crafted based on this vision, following a roadmap for ongoing evolution aligned with organizational priorities and user expectations.

Upon defining the app's overall direction, Bolero engaged icapps to support them in the UX phase. Through close collaboration with KBC's business and IT teams, icapps efficiently grasped investment basics, aiding in the design of wireframes. Given the platform's broad user base, thorough and frequent testing of prototypes with potential users was deemed crucial.

Transforming Bolero's app experience

We completed the Bolero app's reconstruction, initiating a comprehensive redesign and implementing numerous functional enhancements. Commencing the project from the ground up afforded us the flexibility to leverage modern technologies and design patterns. Specifically, for Android, we utilized Jetpack Compose, while for iOS, we adopted SwiftUI.

Our collaboration with the KBC Design team involved the development of a robust component library. This library served as the foundation, providing a comprehensive set of building blocks essential for the application's construction.

The outcome: an app that consistently earned the title of the best online investment platform for five consecutive years

Through a collaborative effort with icapps, Bolero successfully defined a cohesive vision, improved user experience, and established a roadmap, transforming the app into a future-proof investment platform. The result is a fully modernized app equipped with the latest technologies. This application is designed for long-term use by Bolero's users, with a commitment to ongoing expansion and continuous improvement.

We will continue to maintain, improve, and expand the Bolero application.

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