Why this matters
- Friction: Too many steps and forms at kickoff.
- Confidence: People want guidance on risk and goals.
- Consistency: Auto-funding helps build the habit.
Problem & context
Investing is intimidating and time-consuming. We needed a low-effort, high-clarity flow that helps clients start and stay the course.
Goals & metrics
Prove that clients can onboard faster, fund consistently, and understand performance at a glance. Competitor experiences like Wealthsimple continue to offer experiences that are pulling clients and funds away from the Big 5.
Activation
Time-to-first-fund
Reduce setup friction and initial drop-offs.
Retention
Auto-fund adoption
Drive recurring contributions with rules.
Clarity
Portfolio understanding
Improve comprehension of risk/reward.
Approach
We kicked off with a cross-functional workshop before splitting into workstreams to design, build, and validate the experience.
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Workshop & Discovery
Aligned with Strategy, Design, and Dev/Tech on goals, distractors, user personas, and initial ideas — then prioritized together before splitting into individual workstreams.
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Wireframe → Prototype → Iterate
Moved from wireframes to low-fidelity prototypes, then several rounds of high-fidelity iteration ahead of testing.
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Unmoderated Testing & Feedback
Ran unmoderated sessions in Maze. Clients told us investing terminology was hard to follow as first-timers, that visualizations and projections were essential to understanding growth over time, and that they were hesitant to trust AI-driven suggestions without knowing where the data came from and how current it was.
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Package the Vision
Iterated on the findings, then packaged the work into an interactive prototype and showcase video — which was later greenlit as a full sprint to take through to delivery.
Feature highlights
The entire experience revolves around plain-English language that educates users without feeling overwhelming, and intuitive moments to adjust investments as easily as possible.
Onboarding
Guided risk profile
Plain-language trade-offs with progressive disclosure.
Funding
Auto-fund rules
Round-ups, pay-day boosts, scheduled top-ups.
Clarity
Goal tracking
Progress to goal, milestones, and projections.
Key Findings
The design and content trade-offs that shaped the experience.
Prioritize Understanding Client Intention
Generic onboarding questionnaires don't serve the true financial goals of clients - understanding their investing experience, knowledge of terminology, and risk appetite through plain language prompts led to improved success.
Comparison Tools and Suggestions
The key to quicker and more confident client decisions was being able to compare different investing options at a glance.
Informative & Interactive Visualizations
A combination of graphs, contribution breakdowns, and future projections were most effective at allowing clients with little to no investing experience understand the impact these decisions would make on their long-term finances.
Ease of Funding Options
Reducing friction to fund account as much as possible benefitted both clients (utility of investing platform immediately available) and business by having more successfully funded investing products.
Automation and Insights
Hands-off tools that can be adjusted when necessary, and prompts to view and adjust activity as needed form the core of a good and useful client experience.
Results
What we measured through user testing questionnaires in moderated sessions.
Time-to-First-Fund
–30%
Auto-fund Adoption
+50%
Investment Interaction
+40%