Bolero

Bolero is KBC's online investment platform. This app brought it to the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch — built at icapps across 2014 and 2015, so investors could follow their portfolio and the markets from wherever they were, with the security a bank's customers take as a given.

Real-time, and reliable

Most of the work sat behind the screens. Live quotes had to stream in without flattening the battery, and a portfolio had to stay in step with the market while the user did nothing but watch it move. The order path carried the real weight: place an order from a phone — at breakfast, on a train — and it has to arrive once, confirmed with a PIN, exactly as intended. This is money on a regulated platform, so every interaction had to feel as dependable as the desktop tool it extended.

Three platforms, one brand new

The build spanned three Apple platforms in Objective-C, the standard of the day before Swift took hold. The iPad version used the larger canvas for a denser read of the markets. The Apple Watch app is the one worth dwelling on: written when watchOS had only just appeared, it stripped the experience down to a glance — where your portfolio stood, which way prices were heading — so you could check in without reaching for the phone.

What came after

The app has come a long way since. The version on the App Store today carries heatmaps, watchlists, market news and a built-in academy, none of which were part of this first chapter. The earlier release had a narrower and, in its way, harder brief: convince a bank's customers that trading from a phone could feel as solid as the desktop platform they already trusted.