CIBC FirstCaribbean

While at Devbridge, I led design for the launch of the new CIBC FirstCaribbean mobile banking experience across iOS and Android. At the time, Devbridge was a Chicago-based product consultancy with a growing Toronto office, where I eventually became Product Design Manager leading a small team of designers.

This project became a defining milestone in my career. It ultimately led to my promotion from Senior Product Designer to Product Design Manager — not because of visual polish alone, but because it taught me how to operate inside a highly complex, international product ecosystem.

The context

CIBC had acquired FirstCaribbean, a banking organization operating across multiple Caribbean countries. Unlike traditional Canadian banking products, this was not a single-country banking experience.

Customers often held accounts across different Caribbean nations, currencies, and financial systems simultaneously. The challenge was not simply designing a banking app. It was designing an experience that made international banking feel understandable and seamless for everyday users.

At the time, there was no modern mobile banking platform in place. Devbridge was brought in to take the product from 0→1 across platforms, partnering closely with leadership teams in Toronto while coordinating with stakeholders connected to the Caribbean markets the product would ultimately serve.

I led the design effort through the early strategy, product definition, and launch phases before transitioning ownership to the broader team as the platform matured.

The design problem

One of the most important lessons from this project was realizing that products cannot inherit assumptions from the markets you personally live in.

In Canada, most banking experiences assume a relatively simple structure:

• One country
• One primary currency
• Relatively standardized account relationships

FirstCaribbean was fundamentally different. Users needed to clearly understand:

• Which country an account belonged to
• Which currency it operated in
• How money moved between countries
• How to manage multiple financial identities simultaneously

Instead of hiding that complexity, we made it a core part of the product language. Country identity became a flagship design element throughout the experience using:

• Country flags
• Localized account labeling
• Currency codes
• Regional distinctions embedded directly into the UI

The goal was to create confidence and clarity in moments where financial ambiguity could easily create user anxiety.

What I learned

Looking back, this project shaped how I think about product design more than almost any early-career engagement.

I learned:

• How to design for operational and regulatory complexity
• How to work across distributed stakeholders and leadership groups
• How to take ambiguous enterprise requirements and turn them into product decisions
• How to scale design ownership beyond myself
• How important local context is when designing “global” products

Good product design is often less about simplifying complexity away, and more about helping users confidently navigate it.