What the client wanted

• Improvement of the existing independent financial advisor’s (IFA) portal: ensuring an intuitive experience, clear interface, visible history of changes and process stages

• Design of the new homeowner’s case management portal: customer-centric user experience, easy to use platform, clear instructions

Challenges

For homeowner case management portal -

• Most of the clients that apply for equity release are seniors so I had to make sure that designs accommodates them and is trustworthy for them to feel safe when uploading some personal data.

• We discovered a lot of clients use help of their younger, more tech savvy family members to fill out information, for those cases and also to accomodate everyone we ensured that user can still progress with form even when at the given moment they do not have all of the information and can come back to it later with reminders.

• As there are a lot of legal terms that need to be included within the platform, we wanted our design to give space for additional description of those terms with examples given so the process wouldn;t be as intemidating

• Throughout the portal we made sure user is well informed of what is happening and what is needed from them, before any process starts they are given information of how long it may take, what they should prepare for it and what will they be asked for.

For IFA’s portal -

• IFA’s biggest challange that created a lot of errors in the past was lack of visible history f what has been done with the case prior and who dealt with it, so the biggest prority for the new design was to ensure this was featured.

• IFA’s also struggled with no space to upload important dosuments they received from clients or other stakeholders to support given case, in result agent’s that took over the case did not know that something was delivered and had no visibility to process it, with new design they were given that option with extra option to add description and any other supportive information.

• Case details were not visible enough as those were hidden behind a click and open in a new window, to make things easier for agents I proposed a new solution where case details were visible in a window on the same screen.

What I delivered

• Wireframes of the new customer & IFA portal interface, with dashboard, customer questionnaire, notifications, booking system, comments, onboarding all mapped out.

• Customer journey based Feature map with detailed description and technical specs of each feature to improve user experience

• Valuation of existing questionnaire that is an essential and law informed part of the case agreement process

• Interviews with 4 stakeholders within the Equilaw team to support design decisions for IFA portal

• Developing 3 key personas to illustrate the main customer types,

• Actionable reporting to maintain direction and keep stakeholders up to date

The Results

• Evidence based on interviews, to inform their future design strategy, so they can continue to optimise and develop user centric products

• Understanding of their different types of users, their needs and challenges they face in regards to going through successful process of equity release application

• Launch of a market leading customer portal experience, giving them a competitive advantage in the market

• Optimised user questionnaire through reduced number of questions asked, thereby enhancing efficiency, while also providing assistance with the most challenging inquiries to alleviate stress.