Client Goal
Define the most attractive consumer segments for a new personal loans push in the U.S. and understand how those consumers discover, evaluate, and choose a lending provider.

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Background
The client was a growth-stage fintech company seeking a sharper commercial path in personal loans. It needed more than broad market research. It needed a clearer view of who to target, how to position the offering, and where trust, friction, and differentiation were most at stake across the consumer journey.

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Decision at Stake
Which consumer segments were most worth targeting — and how should the client shape its positioning, messaging, and user experience to earn consideration in a crowded lending marketplace?

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What We Did
The AND Group designed and executed a multi-phase research effort that combined internal stakeholder interviews, desk research, market and competitive context work, consumer and competitor social listening, recent fintech consumer interviews, a 2,001-respondent segmentation study, and 20 consumer journey interviews with online ethnography. The work produced a market model, prioritized target segments, early persona development, and journey maps showing how consumers searched, compared, and decided.



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What Changed


The work gave the client a clearer basis for commercial focus. Two priority segments were selected for deeper development, supported by distinct behavioral, attitudinal, and journey insight. The research clarified how trusted third-party resources shaped consideration, how differently debt-consolidation and home-improvement shoppers approached the category, and what mattered most in lender evaluation — including transparency, ease, validation of use case, and the ability to explore rates without unnecessary friction. The result was a more grounded foundation for targeting, positioning, journey design, and cross-functional decision-making — with later public-facing positioning directionally reflecting several of the needs and behaviors surfaced in the work.