Accelerating client onboarding in private banking: redefining client experiences with a cutting-edge design and operational software.
Furthermore, the results of the user resting showcase a successful and time-saving model after using the onboarding application. Whereas before it took up to 4 weeks to open an account, it now takes less than a minute to submit all the necessary information.
My role Scope
UX/UI Designer Client Onboarding Application
Tools Time Frame
Figma, Jira Apr 2022- June 2023
Description
The World’s Best Private Bank aimed to enhance one of its B2B2C products. The objective was to create a cohesive onboarding application that efficiently handles complex scenarios, ensuring uniform user experiences for advisors, analysts and the clients they connect with.
By utilizing an agile methodology to design, our team was able to deliver an optimized and simplified onboarding platform that reduced manual efforts and automated the document reviewing process.
My Contribution
Research, concept, interaction design, prototyping, and operational modeling.
Ship and own large-scope features like statement preferences and document reviewing across the entire platform.
Team and Background
The complex and large-scale project involves a cross-functional team, which includes designers, product owners, the engineering team, content designers, and researchers across multiple lines of business.
In addition to my immediate design team of 8, I collaborated closely with user researchers, content designers, PMs, engineers, as well as analysts and advisors, in a large product team of 100+.
Challenge
In today's dynamic banking landscape, it can take as long as 45 days for a high-net-worth client to open a bank account, burdened by constraints, security measures, legal requirements, compliance protocols, and technology support. Furthermore, the use of offline data storage by account managers created a lack of trust in the onboarding platform.
Opportunity
The firm recognized the potential to retain and attract more high-net-worth clients by significantly reducing the onboarding time. This opportunity strengthened the bank's relationship with existing clients and positioned it as the preferred choice for new high-net-worth clientele.
How can we bring more visibility into document changes to reduce manual efforts and expedite account opening time to increase customer satisfaction?
It previously took 4 software programs to complete the end-to-end onboarding process.
Outcome and Impact
I designed, iterated, and shipped a document / data comparator dashboard and an error analysis component, that provides a holistic view of the document status and data details, empowering operators to identify, track and review documents throughout the account opening experience.
When reviewing client documents, all the documents are sorted into individual accordions.
Primary actions are either “upload” or “search docs” to find the document in the data base.
All the documents have a status update, which lets the analyst know what to do with that document.
End to-end workflows: our team was split into triads, which included stakeholders like product owners, engineers, and designers. I was involved in the Documents and Operations triads, where I shipped 3 distinct features that the tool implemented.
Research
Before designing solutions, I made sure to consider how the tool operates and behaves across the four axis of work: business, human, mechanical, and data. Each of these play a crucial part in building an efficient tool that considers the human interacting with it, in relation to other verticals of the event.
Ideate
Our team had a small research team; therefore, I had the opportunity to wear the hat of a researcher and take on additional responsibilities in the realms of user research and usability testing. Following these tests, I analyzed the research data and gathered main insights:
Design goals
I developed an initial set of visual hypothesis that became the core concepts for guiding the design framework.
1. Progressive disclosure
Concept where metadata remains hidden until the accordion is opened. Removing text from the page on default results in fewer visual distractions. It transforms the previously static display to dynamic content, encouraging engagement.
2. Status indicators
Important method of communicating severity level information to users and guiding them towards a page element, informing the user of something that needs their attention.
3. Progress bar
To consider for multi-stage processes, I added a visual element which displays the user's progress through various stages of opening the account for a client.
Approach
Design
To provide a visual representation of the user journey and interactions, I created comprehensive user flows. The business operational flow provides a holistic view of the application and guides the design process, including identifying potential risk areas.
Involvement
Built a clickable prototype with 200+ screens to capture the End-to-End GOB event, creating a central hub for reference, discussion, ideation, and collaboration.
Maintained and evolved the prototype to reflect revisions and additions to the End-to-End event based on discussion, ideation, and collaboration among teams.
Hosted routine walkthroughs and enhanced offsites, workshops, and cross-functional discussions with End-to-End prototype and the expertise of the forum.
Impact:
Drove alignment among workstreams, including 15+ designers, 50+ product owners, and 30+ technology representatives.
Facilitated collaboration in 10+ cross- workstream offsites, workshops, and roundtables to drive consistency throughout onboarding platform.
Enabled ideation and innovation of 5+ structured processes via new features and functionalities to address the needs of diverse user groups and exception onboarding cases.
Conclusion
White-boarding session and rough sketching are my go-to practices for brainstorming solutions. It was important to understand the different types of accounts we are dealing with and what are the differences in requirements for each.
Quick assist feature |
If the analyst has a question he/she wants to ask, ticket actions provides the ability to send a message or a request without leaving the page that is being worked on.
I designed a document processing engine that scans returned documents and displays all the changed fields so the reviewer can easily see what was changed and who made the change.
1. AG grid implementation
With in-cell editing and interactive features, AG Grid is optimal for managing large volumes of data efficiently. Since the document processing engine deals with a variety of data, AG Grid's capability to handle diverse datasets made it a suitable choice.
2. Signifier usage
To simplify the complex workflow, I added banners which act as interactive elements that provide users with clues about how they can interact with a particular interface.
3. Fixed sidebar
Continuous access to important links and pages was essential, therefore a sticky left nav enhanced the user accessibility and ease of navigation within the interface.
Document Comparator |
Throughout the project, I learned a great deal about the importance of agile design systems and the value of collaboration and communication in driving successful project outcomes. We encountered various challenges, including the difficulty of reaching our users and technology partners due to the ongoing banking crisis at the time.
Despite the challenges, our team was able to remain flexible and focused on delivering a high-quality onboarding platform that met the needs of the client. Throughout the engagement, my team and I were also working on building an event operational model, which represents the Global Onboarding through the four lenses- human, business, data, and technology. This model served as a tool to supply a single source of truth for the Private Bank Onboarding experience, illuminating areas of risk and opportunity across the balance of business, data, tools, and people. It was used as a communication nexus to help make decisions, answer challenging questions, and see the bigger picture of the entire onboarding event.
