Data-Intensive B2B Platform
🎯
Main Goal
Develop a cutting-edge B2B Fund Administration SaaS that leverages modern technology to streamline processes, enhance efficiency, reduce costs, ensure regulatory compliance, and adapt to strategic changes effectively.
👩
Contributions
-
First and only designer on the team
-
Conducted research, designed, and prototyped the main product
-
Created support materials, including a website
-
Designed features for potential platform expansion beyond the main roadmap
🧐
Challenges
⛓️
⏳
Untested assumptions and strict industry regulations
Major strategic pivots increasing development time and cost
🔬
Lack of innovation and compliance obstacles
📍
Impact
💲
Efficiency Boost
Automating administrative processes reduced fund managers' operational costs by up to 30% and save an average of 20 hours per week in manual tasks.
⚠️
Improved Compliance
Built-in compliance features ensure a 95% reduction in regulatory breaches, minimizing potential legal risks and associated costs.
📈
Real-Time Data Access:
Providing real-time data access improved decision-making speed by 40%, enabling fund managers to respond swiftly to market changes and investment opportunities.
01/Discovery
-
Conducted team discussions to understand business requirements and gather stakeholder knowledge
-
Created consensus on plans, product direction, and key milestones
What was the Problem
Over 10,000 mutual funds in the U.S. distributed through costly, outdated, and manual processes
Significant friction and barriers due to multiple intermediaries
Expensive fund creation and maintenance, with limited investor analytics available.
Funds are under pressure and seeing volume decline from passive vehicles
Supply chain with leakage from fees charged at every step. Powered by outdated technology, creating hidden costs due to lack of data
The data is unavailable to the manager, inhibiting analytics
About 40% of costs lie in transfer agent, accounting and custody alone
Identifying Users
-
Shopify Model: Our platform connects two types of audiences, similar to Shopify, by providing the technology for them to operate.
-
User-Centric Approach: Identified relevant customers and prioritized their goals, needs, and motivations, shifting from a features-first to a users-first mindset.
Largest investment managers by AUM (Assets Under Management)
Based on stakeholder analysis and project goals, for phase 1 we decided to concentrate on fund managers who issue and manage securities offered by their corporation
👤
Primary User
Fund Managers
Manage investment portfolios to achieve specific objectives
Goals
Cost-efficient and profitable asset management
Needs
Full visibility into ownership distribution, transactions, voting, tax reporting, and corporate actions
Must
Comply with industry regulations
Value
Security and accuracy of data
👤
Secondary User
Investors
Individual and institutional investors
(pension funds, governments, etc.)
Goals
Low-risk, high-return investments
Needs
Data transparency, low fees, freedom of choice
Must
Report on Taxes
Value
Accuracy and Efficiency
Based on the above, What are the Market Opportunities
We identified several reasons why active funds are under pressure and losing customers; here are the top three:
💾
Legacy software
🔐
Data leakage
😥
Rising Competition
Fund administration technology is outdated because managers have focused on investing rather than software development.
Today, it's crucial to integrate advanced technology into business operations.
Communication and data between managers and investors are hidden by intermediaries, leading to significant value loss.
Direct-to-customer platforms could eliminate these issues.
Robo-advisors and ETFs are more appealing to consumers due to their automated strategies and lower fees compared to traditional human fund managers.
🚫
Large funds are less likely to adopt new solutions due to institutional biases, while smaller funds, under more pressure and more willing to innovate, are more likely to adopt new technology.
High-level Goals
📌
Digitize paper and PDFs
in customer onboarding and security creation
📌
Automate processes
like reconciliation, payments, and compliance
📌
Enable real-time access
to customer data for managers
02/Interactions
-
Designing for a data-heavy platform is akin to sculpting, starting with a massive block and refining until optimal.
-
Less data often leads to less practical and useful solutions, but keeping all data yields an unworkable app.
-
Balancing data retention is crucial, prioritizing and organizing features based on the main use case.
Fund Creation
Challenges
💰
-
Fund creation is costly and time-consuming, often requiring legal assistance.
-
Setting up a fund can take days and involves intricate processes.
What can be done
💻
👩💻
Transitioning to a digital setup, prioritizing scalability and simplicity.
Flexibility introduced allowing managers to skip steps and fill data as desired.
📲
Designed a user-friendly process akin to setting up a Facebook group, taking roughly 5 minutes to complete.
.jpg)
Useflow 1: As easy as setting up a Facebook group (click on the image so see a better version)
Investor Onboarding
Challenges
😤
📑
🔁
Exhausting process often requiring physical presence
Involves reading through numerous contracts and forms
Repetitive filling of the same information
What can be done
💻
Developing a full onboarding experience, from account creation to the main goal of investing in a fund.
Focus Areas
KYC(Know Your Customer) Compliance
Ensures due diligence by identifying customer, residence, investment objectives, and suitability.
Process Efficiency
-
Entire process from registration to fund purchase takes under 10 minutes.
-
Prioritizes security and industry compliance.
Modular Design
-
Adjusts flow based on account types
-
Allows managers to set up detailed investor verifications as needed.
User Convenience
Once verified by one manager, investors can reuse their KYC data to sign up with other fund managers, similar to using a Facebook account for app sign-ins.
Useflow 2: Sign up + the main objective in a single flow (click on the image so see a better version)
Transfer Agents (TA)
TAs play a crucial role as record keepers and transaction processors. They provide a database of who the shareholders are and what shares of what fund they own. They also connect the fund with its investors and handle the process anytime there is a transaction between the two.
Challenges
💾
💰
🗣️
📑
Records and transactions are often kept offline and manually maintained, leading to higher failure rates and serious business consequences.
Most TAs charge exorbitant fees for trivial items like paper clips and lack meaningful entry standards; unlike brokers, they don’t need to be licensed or certified.
Assessing TA competency is difficult as there is almost no way to get feedback from existing customers or shareholders.
TAs often have binding agreements with high termination fees, making it challenging for issuers to switch providers.
What did we do
Phase 1 Goals and Industry Feedback Integration
😖
The hardest part was the lack of available data because a lot of proprietary investment solutions are extremely hard to get.
👏
The CEO made a huge contribution to research by meeting up with top execs of large firms to gather feedback on products they use and their ultimate goals.
03/Ideation
-
The team iterated on the design multiple times, cutting several ideas.
-
For instance, we considered an investor dashboard for viewing equity, but most investors only have 1-2 funds, making this feature unnecessary.
-
Prioritize user needs and avoided unnecessary features to prevent feature overload.
Phase 1 Goals that enable TA to:
💲
Process Transactions
Handle money for subscriptions and redemptions.
🗳️
Vote Management
Conduct and manage shareholder votes.
👥
Dividend Payments
Manage the payment of dividends to shareholders.
📑
Tax Reporting
Generate tax reports for income passed through the fund to shareholders.
📞
Communication Distribution
Distribute various forms of communications to shareholders.
📊
Data Repository
Provide an up-to-date fund and investor data repository with real-time analytics.
04/Execution
Color Theme
Process
🎨
Started with black and white for layout, spacing, usability, readability, and accessibility.
Applied colors to highlight important elements or added value.
Color Palette
#004EBC
#00AF3D
#E5352B
#EF9021
#FBFBFD
#3E3F42
#6B6C6F
#FFFFFF
-
The shade of blue for a calm, trustworthy, reliable, and secure image.
-
Replaceable with any color that matches the manager’s corporate style.
UI Framework
Platform Usage
💻
💻
📲
Managers primarily access via desktop devices.
Investors are split between mobile and desktop.
Framework Selection
Chose Vuetify component library for speed and suitability. Built on Google’s Material Design (MD)
😖
Usability Issues
Some MD components may hurt user experience.
👎
Lack of Unique Identity
Risk of losing product personality and creating trust bias
Choice of Components
✅
Robust, look fresh and modern representing the high standards we set for our product design
✅
Accessible to work for all
of our users, regardless of how they navigate and interact with the app
✅
Flexible to support easy scalability and the variety of use cases within our product
TYPOGRAPHY
INPUT FIELDS
BUTTONS
LABELS
ICONS
BUTTONS
Anatomy of UI
Initial Design
Created key screens in low-fidelity to test usability and scalability.
Anatomy of Testing and Refining
Iterated designs to improve functionality
Final Structure
Developed a unified layout adaptable for various user types and use cases
Top bar, where users control their profile settings, search for things and can access recent profile activity
Sidebar with nested navigation throughout the platform
The main area for the main content
The main layout with random data
Design Choices
Here are three design samples and choices I made without delving into the 200+ page design.
Breadcrumbs for Navigation
Aid wayfinding and indicate the current location in the app's hierarchy.
Space-Saving Design
Breadcrumbs double as page titles.
Link Functionality
All but the last step are links to parent screens.
Manager's view on Balances
Grouping content into cards
Quick to scan and provide an overview
Flexible for responsive design, fitting any screen
Unifies experience across various device types
Investor's view on fund details
Button Styles
-
Modified Material Design elements for better usability
-
Text buttons without a visual container can be awkward on touch screens
-
Difficult to register touches and unclear boundaries
-
-
Avoided all-caps text buttons
-
Harder to read, especially for dyslexic users
-
Investor's ID verification
I made 4 styles for various purposes:
Primary Buttons
For major actions, in main accent color
Secondary Buttons
For secondary actions, styled like primary but in grey
Outlined Buttons
For selecting multiple options, usually in forms
Icon Buttons
For specific actions like table settings or deleting documents
05/Outcome and Learnings
🔎
Trend
Reducing design complexities works for consumer apps with simple goals but not always for enterprise products.
👥
Audience
Designed for users who value functionality over aesthetics, with specific expectations and goals.
📈
Agile Team
Enabled faster progress without compromising design or technology.
⚙️
Improvements
Introduced significant enhancements compared to current industry standards.
⏰
Challenges
Overcame numerous regulatory challenges within a short timeframe.