Strategic research for digital products in European finance.
Foxontherun is a boutique research firm working with banks, payment companies and financial groups across Europe. We build the proprietary data and strategic foundations upon which product teams make considered decisions.
What we do
Three practice areas, governed by a single operating principle: every strategic output we deliver is grounded in our own fieldwork or in structured data we have built ourselves.
Competitive intelligence & benchmarking
In-depth research into digital products across the financial sector. Structured datasets, extensive fieldwork and a proprietary methodology – the means by which our clients come to understand precisely where they stand against the market.
UX & service design strategy
Strategic work at the level of product vision – concerned with what financial institutions ought to build, not solely with how it should look. We work alongside in-house product teams as long-term partners, rather than as a delivery vendor.
Data foundations for AI-driven decisions
We structure research outputs so that product and design teams may extract value continuously through their own AI tools, moving organisations from static PDF reports to queryable knowledge bases.
For a global partner in the financial sector, we have built a proprietary benchmark of digital banking experiences across the region: a structured dataset covering dozens of banks, hundreds of UX heuristics and thousands of evaluated data points. A research asset that exists nowhere else in comparable depth.
How we work
Boutique, for us, is an operating model rather than a marketing term. The following is what it means in practice.
Senior teams, considered depth
The people on your project are the people you met. Our work is led by practitioners with fifteen or more years in the financial sector, not by partners who sell whilst juniors deliver.
Data over opinion
Every strategic recommendation we put forward is grounded in our own fieldwork or in a structured dataset we have built. We do not produce point-of-view documents founded merely on what we already knew.
Partnership, not delivery
The best outcomes arise when our clients work alongside us, rather than observe us at work. We build long-term relationships with in-house product teams, embed ourselves where it is genuinely useful and hand over what we have built.
Long horizon
Most of our client relationships span several years and multiple product cycles. It is, perhaps, the most honest quality signal we are able to offer.
Selected clients
Our work spans leading retail banks, global payment networks and European fintechs.
About Foxontherun
Foxontherun is the continuation of more than a decade of work in research-led product strategy for the European financial sector. The team behind it previously built and ran one of the recognised UX and service design practices serving the Czech banking, telecommunications and energy sectors, before consolidating that experience into a focused boutique firm.
Today we work with a small number of partners and long-standing clients across Europe – by design. Our scale is the result of deliberate choice rather than constraint: we accept those engagements in which we believe our research and strategic work will compound over time, and we decline the remainder.
Lukáš Zazvonil
Co-founder & Managing Partner
More than two decades in business leadership across financial services, technology and enterprise consulting. Founder and CEO of Bell & Hurry, the UX practice whose client portfolio spans UniCredit, Komerční banka, Česká spořitelna, ČEZ, O2, Nedbank and Vienna Insurance Group, amongst others.
LinkedIn →Kamil Schwarz
Co-founder & Managing Partner
Two decades in delivery and product leadership across the European financial sector. Formerly Chief Delivery Officer at Bell & Hurry – the UX practice serving Czech banking, telecommunications and energy – and previously Innovation Project Manager at Raiffeisenbank, where his work on banking products began.
LinkedIn →