Designing user flow for automating execution of financial transactions

My role and responsibilities included interpreting data and feedback, determining information architecture, prototyping, UI Design, QA.
Tools used: Paper and pen, Smaply, Sketch, Plant, Invision
Powerwrap
Powerwrap is a fintech company, one of Australia's leading wealth management platforms. It is used by advisers, wealth managers and brokers to manage and report on their client portfolios. Initially clients would have to interact with multiple non integrated systems (requiring different logins, workflows etc). Powerwrap created Hive to address those problems and allow user interactions with different backend systems in one frontend application.
Problems:
In the current process, the financial adviser requests payment to a nominated bank account through Hive, but the account details are not stored in the database yet
  • The payment request is processed manually by Powerwrap team which leads to mistakes
  • Bank account details recorded on paper
  • No notifications for the adviser
Goals:
  • Allow advisers to place a payment to a nominated bank account via Hive
  • Eliminate manual processing and capture all the nominated bank accounts in a database
  • Introduce a dual approval process requiring two different persons to authorise a transaction (maker-checker)
  • Inform customer of the progress of payment

Research

Powerwrap team and I began to reach out to the Relationship Manager to get a better understanding of their pain points around transfering money to bank accounts. Getting a better understanding of their daily tasks helped confirm our preconceived assumptions.

Personas.

George Taylor

Age: 52
Occupation: Financial adviser
Role: Manages a small team comprising of a Financial Dealer Assistant and a Research Associate
Motivation: Improve his quality of his service and its perceived value by trying innovative solutions
Pain points:
There is no easy way to transfer money to my bank account via Hive. I have to ask my assistant to get the bank details from the onboarding documentation and then request a transfer.
Goals:
I would love to have a direct process without much overlay. Having a maker-checker two step verification would be a good addition to the feature. Deliver the best outcome and quality of service to my clients and avoid human error.

Sophia Roberts

Age: 27
Occupation: Assistant
Role: Assisting in a management of mixed portfolios of wholesale and retail clients
Motivation: Help advisers do their work effectively
Pain points:
The current service desk is a pain, sometimes an email or just a phone call is easier. Too much repetition and lack of automation.
Goals:
I would love to have a system allowing more automation to be more efficient and reliable.

Journey mapping
Making payments

This Sunday night Johnathan Slayd (George's client) sends an email to George Taylor regarding a cash he needs.
In the morning George Taylor checks his email, reads Jonathan request and responds that it can be done, asking whether Jonathan prefers same day payment with fees or next day without fees.
Jonathan sees the email and responds that next day is fine.
George receives confirmation and gives instruction to Sophia to transfer the payment as per Jonathan's request.
Sophia receives instructions from George to manage a payment for Jonathan Slayd. Sophia checks the time. It is already 10am and she knows the cut-off time is 2pm with Powerwrap so she still
has time.

Interaction with Powerwrap

Sophia locates the account details from her copy of the onboarding documentation, as she knows the Powerwrap system requires to provide the exact details.
Sophia logs into Hive, raises a new request and select the "Payment to nominated account".
Sophia selects Jonathan Slayd's portfolio and fills in the form using the details related to the nominated bank account and submits the request.
Sophia sees the confirmation that it has been lodged successfully.
Sophia gets a notification
that the ticket is closed so she assumes that is done. She confirms to George that the payment request was successful.
George contacts Jonathan to let him know that the fund has been transferred.
Jonathan can see the money in his bank account.
Sophia can see the payment in the cashbook the following business day
By learning about their motivations, frustrations, and needs we were able to gain user insights.

Pain points

- User flow is not intuitive
- Provide  bank account details each time
- Risk of mistakes
- Transfer fees are not displayed
- No warning of cut-off time

Opportunity

- Automating transactions
- Access to bank account details from Hive
- Notify that the payment has been processed
- Offer the option to add new bank account

Execution

High fidelity design.

After my design was validated through paper we conducted usability testing with the fidelity prototype. We organised meetings with stakeholder and got great feedback about design of the form. We also realised that more details related to the fees was required se we made the modifications before finalising the design.

Select a nominated account

Hive's new feature gives advisers the ability to select a bank account (specific for each portfolio), choose the type of fees and have the cut-off in real time.
Select bank account
Select type of fee
Display time remaining till cut-off

Request approval from a peer before payment

Select a peer before payment and leave a note.
First step in the approval process
Cleared layout of the payment summary
Option to leave notes
When a Powerwrap client sends a request, it will push a notification on Hive and send email to the approver.

Notifications

Approver gets a notification throught Hive.
More details available
Display status

Payment request

The approver has the option to reject or approve the payment request.
Second step in maker-checker process
Display time remaining till cut-off
Reminder that the instructions are final

Conclusion

Allowing nominating bank accounts directly in Hive was a real necessity for both advisers and Powerwrap team.
We successfully shipped the feature in June 2020. It created a streamlined process for the advisers.