Octopus Money Direct
Seamless digital rebranding without service disruption
Following Octopus Money Direct’s acquisition of Virgin Money Investments & Pensions, we delivered a seamless rebrand with minimal customer disruption, successfully relaunching the service after a planned weekend shutdown.
Working with distributed teams, I established a shared design and communication framework to consistently rebrand all customer touchpoints across web, online banking, mobile apps, and supporting assets, including fund-performance PDFs.
Relaunching Virgin Money’s Investments and Pensions offering as Octopus Money Direct
I led the rebranding of all digital touchpoints—from the brochureware site to the secure banking service and mobile app—transitioning from Virgin Money to Octopus Money Direct.
Rebranding the mobile app at speed
Virgin Money’s Investments and Pensions mobile app needed to be rebranded quickly, without changing or losing any functionality. I worked closely with another UX designer and the lead app developer to deliver this.
Together, we identified challenges in applying the new Octopus Money Direct colour palette to the existing Virgin Money designs, as well as issues with text sizing and icon replacement.
A central rebranding guide for secure online banking
Because the online banking service already had long and complex user journeys—and the rebrand needed to happen quickly—I created a clear mapping guide. It showed how colours should be updated, which fonts and styles should replace existing ones, and how to handle exceptions.
This freed up time to resupply other assets, including imagery and charts, and to focus on meeting WCAG AA accessibility guidelines.
Orchestrating the programme of work
My role as VMI Design team lead
Managing resource and expectations
I worked with the Project Manager to scope, estimate, and plan the work, then managed the resources needed to deliver it. I kept the Chief Customer and Commercial Officer regularly updated, reassuring her that we had the right team in place, all key customer touchpoints were covered, and the team understood their roles following the separation.
One weekend to re-launch the service
To manage the changeover, I created a blueprint for the separation period that mapped out exactly when and where customers would encounter the new brand across all digital channels. This also helped highlight potential friction points and informed the support strategy for the customer care team.
Measuring success and planning what’s next
Alongside delivery, we defined first-quarter KPIs to measure, monitor, and optimise the rebrand after launch.
We also identified longer-term opportunities to improve existing customer journeys and future roadmap features, including pension drawdown.