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Bank-ready production MVP — ballpark cost / ROM ask

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Bank-ready production MVP — ballpark cost / ROM ask

Question (as the buyer asked or paraphrased)

What is a ballpark for a bank-compliant, production-level MVP to go live with several banks, with iteration afterward— understanding the vendor is working from limited product information today?

How we handled it

  • Explained that a credible ROM depends on v1 scope: number of banks on first go-live, compliance and security bar, and which integrations (identity, documents, core/LOS) are in vs manual in the first release; tight pilot vs several banks + multiple integrations can multiply effort.
  • Gave directional sense only: moving from a 2-week demo to a defensible first production slice is often an order of magnitude or more vs a single sprint; in many similar programs, effort often falls in a low- to mid–six figure band, very wide, with multi-phase timelines; parallelism vs sequencing and team size affect calendar time; avoid false precision in email.
  • Offered a working session (~1 hour) to align on: what MVP v1 must do for first go-live, how many and which banks in the first wave, and in / out for compliance and integrations.
  • Suggested product path: design partner(s) → structured discovery with an anchor bank to inform MVP scope → then a firm quote with full scope.

Principles we used

  • Scope before anchor: ROM without assumptions misprices the company and the client.
  • Band, not a point: Wide range + explicit “not a quote until scoped.”
  • Next step is collaborative: one hour to reduce mutual ambiguity beats another round of email.

Caveats

  • A phased ROM (even wide) may still be offered after a short pass if the buyer needs internal planning—only as allowed by commercial policy.
  • “Single design partner” vs “first wave of several banks” must be languaged so it does not sound contradictory.

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