Improve trust & experience for advisers on an alternative investment platform

I managed the UX team to conduct user research, revamp the Design System and UI, and design key client & team management functionalities for financial advisers on an alternative investment platform.

I managed the UX team to conduct user research, revamp the Design System and UI, and design key client & team management functionalities for financial advisers on an alternative investment platform.

I managed the UX team to conduct user research, revamp the Design System and UI, and design key client & team management functionalities for financial advisers on an alternative investment platform.

year & role

2022

Skills

Senior UX designer

Design System, UI design, managing UX team

Team size

10 people

1 researcher, 2 designers, 5 devs, 2 BAs

year

2022

role & Skills

Senior UX designer

Design System, UI design, managing UX team

Team size

10 people

1 researcher, 2 designers, 5 devs, 2 BAs

year & role

2022

Skills

Senior UX designer

Design System, UI design, managing UX team

Team size

10 people

1 researcher, 2 designers, 5 devs, 2 BAs

Business background

The traditional balanced investment portfolio has been 60% stocks, 40% bonds for years.

But a growing population of investors are keen to add more alternative investments, ie. investments outside of traditional stocks and bonds, to diversify their portfolio and get better returns.

Some examples of alternative investments are:

Agriculture and Infrastructure
E.g. cattle farms, solar farms, transportation projects
Alternative real estate projects
E.g. data centres, self-storage, healthcare facilities
Private credit, private equity & venture capital
E.g. equity and debt funding for startups, peer-to-peer lending

Traditionally, these investments are only accessible by institutional investors due to their complex nature, high risk and high minimum investments.

iPartners is an Australian fintech startup offering access to these investments to high net worth investors (HNWI) and advisers:

On the other hand, iPartners also has a platform business that white-label this technology to other wealth managers (such as Barrenjoey or overseas wealth managers) who want to open up their alternative investments to individual investors and advisers in Australia.

Business background

The traditional balanced investment portfolio has been 60% stocks, 40% bonds for years.

But a growing population of investors are keen to add more alternative investments, ie. investments outside of traditional stocks and bonds, to diversify their portfolio and get better returns.

Some examples of alternative investments are:

Agriculture and Infrastructure
E.g. cattle farms, solar farms, transportation projects
Alternative real estate projects
E.g. data centres, self-storage, healthcare facilities
Private credit, private equity & venture capital
E.g. equity and debt funding for startups, peer-to-peer lending

Traditionally, these investments are only accessible by institutional investors due to their complex nature, high risk and high minimum investments.

iPartners is an Australian fintech startup offering access to these investments to high net worth investors (HNWI) and advisers:

On the other hand, iPartners also has a platform business that white-label this technology to other wealth managers (such as Barrenjoey or overseas wealth managers) who want to open up their alternative investments to individual investors and advisers in Australia.

Business background

The traditional balanced investment portfolio has been 60% stocks, 40% bonds for years.

But a growing population of investors are keen to add more alternative investments, ie. investments outside of traditional stocks and bonds, to diversify their portfolio and get better returns.

Some examples of alternative investments are:

Agriculture and Infrastructure
E.g. cattle farms, solar farms, transportation projects
Alternative real estate projects
E.g. data centres, self-storage, healthcare facilities
Private credit, private equity & venture capital
E.g. equity and debt funding for startups, peer-to-peer lending

Traditionally, these investments are only accessible by institutional investors due to their complex nature, high risk and high minimum investments.

iPartners is an Australian fintech startup offering access to these investments to high net worth investors (HNWI) and advisers:

On the other hand, iPartners also has a platform business that white-label this technology to other wealth managers (such as Barrenjoey or overseas wealth managers) who want to open up their alternative investments to individual investors and advisers in Australia.

Problems to solve

Financial advisers, a new segment of customers for iPartners, require new functionalities such as better 1️⃣ navigation, 2️⃣ user management, 3️⃣ client's investment management and 4️⃣ client onboarding.

  1. Advisers want to see their clients when logging in by default (rather than seeing their own investment portfolios) and want to switch to different wealth managers' workspaces easily

  1. Advisers are time-poor and want to outsource administrative tasks to their assistants.

Currently the platform does not let advisers add their desk assistants who can take care of onboarding tasks (e.g. verify identity, submit relevant documents, etc) and post-investment reporting.

  1. Advisers need more user-friendly functionalities to manage client's investments

Advisers require an interactive client list to quickly find a relevant client, a dashboard and list of investments for each client for quarterly reviews, and able to browse investment opportunities

Currently advisers (or their desk assistants) only receive annual statements for their clients; for their quarterly reviews with clients they need to call the Operations team to generate an account overview report. Advisers want to self-service each client's account overview and current investments list to make it more convenient. Above is an initial sketch of the dashboard and investment list.

  1. Desk assistants need to onboard client before investments, and continue post-investments onboarding for distributions and tax residency

Pre-investment onboarding consists of tasks such as verifying client's identity and submitting relevant documents. After the account is investable and their adviser has done the investments, assistants continues with post-investment tasks such as supplying bank details for distributions, and updating tax residency.

At the same time, a new Design System is also needed to uplift the look and feel, accessibility and responsiveness of the entire iPartners platform.

Problems to solve

Financial advisers, a new segment of customers for iPartners, require new functionalities such as better 1️⃣ navigation, 2️⃣ user management, 3️⃣ client's investment management and 4️⃣ client onboarding.

  1. Advisers want to see their clients when logging in by default (rather than seeing their own investment portfolios) and want to switch to different wealth managers' workspaces easily

  1. Advisers are time-poor and want to outsource administrative tasks to their assistants.

Currently the platform does not let advisers add their desk assistants who can take care of onboarding tasks (e.g. verify identity, submit relevant documents, etc) and post-investment reporting.

  1. Advisers need more user-friendly functionalities to manage client's investments

Advisers require an interactive client list to quickly find a relevant client, a dashboard and list of investments for each client for quarterly reviews, and able to browse investment opportunities

Currently advisers (or their desk assistants) only receive annual statements for their clients; for their quarterly reviews with clients they need to call the Operations team to generate an account overview report. Advisers want to self-service each client's account overview and current investments list to make it more convenient. Above is an initial sketch of the dashboard and investment list.

  1. Desk assistants need to onboard client before investments, and continue post-investments onboarding for distributions and tax residency

Pre-investment onboarding consists of tasks such as verifying client's identity and submitting relevant documents. After the account is investable and their adviser has done the investments, assistants continues with post-investment tasks such as supplying bank details for distributions, and updating tax residency.

At the same time, a new Design System is also needed to uplift the look and feel, accessibility and responsiveness of the entire iPartners platform.

Problems to solve

Financial advisers, a new segment of customers for iPartners, require new functionalities such as better 1️⃣ navigation, 2️⃣ user management, 3️⃣ client's investment management and 4️⃣ client onboarding.

  1. Advisers want to see their clients when logging in by default (rather than seeing their own investment portfolios) and want to switch to different wealth managers' workspaces easily

  1. Advisers are time-poor and want to outsource administrative tasks to their assistants.

Currently the platform does not let advisers add their desk assistants who can take care of onboarding tasks (e.g. verify identity, submit relevant documents, etc) and post-investment reporting.

  1. Advisers need more user-friendly functionalities to manage client's investments

Advisers require an interactive client list to quickly find a relevant client, a dashboard and list of investments for each client for quarterly reviews, and able to browse investment opportunities

Currently advisers (or their desk assistants) only receive annual statements for their clients; for their quarterly reviews with clients they need to call the Operations team to generate an account overview report. Advisers want to self-service each client's account overview and current investments list to make it more convenient. Above is an initial sketch of the dashboard and investment list.

  1. Desk assistants need to onboard client before investments, and continue post-investments onboarding for distributions and tax residency

Pre-investment onboarding consists of tasks such as verifying client's identity and submitting relevant documents. After the account is investable and their adviser has done the investments, assistants continues with post-investment tasks such as supplying bank details for distributions, and updating tax residency.

At the same time, a new Design System is also needed to uplift the look and feel, accessibility and responsiveness of the entire iPartners platform.

Vision

Help advisers navigate the platform well, add assistants who can help with clients' onboarding, and manage their clients' investments easier.

Solutions

  1. Improve the platform navigation on desktop & mobile

1.1. Advisers can switch to different fund managers' workspaces, or switch user roles (adviser or investor) to access the relevant functionalities for each user role

1.2. Add collapse and on-hover label functionalities to the sidebar navigation

On desktop, collapse the sidebar into a small column to make the most of space, and create on-hover sidebar labels to help users find the right menu item while the sidebar is collapsed.

1.3. Reorganise the tertiary menu which is shown when adviser is viewing each client, so that tasks belonging to advisers are grouped together (and so are tasks belonging to assistants)

Before: Within each client's account, having 2 sub-menu navigations make it confusing for advisers / desk assistants. Overlap between Personal details, Bank details & TFN, and Onboarding tabs also adds to the confusion.
After: For each client, all information are consolidated into 1 horizontal sub-menu, with adviser-focused tasks of investment management on the left and assistant-focused tasks of administration (e.g. onboarding & reporting) on the right.

  1. Create the desk assistant user roles with permissions for administrative tasks

2.1. Let advisers have the ability to add or remove desk assistant users from the platform, with multi-factor authentication (MFA) required for login

Advisers can add desk assistants instead of requesting support from iPartners staff

2.2. Advisers can see an overview list of desk assistants, their statuses, last login and access quick actions to edit, delete or suspend them

  1. Help desk assistants complete client onboarding tasks easier

3.1. Redesign the client list with clearer onboarding status and add a shortcut action to complete onboarding

Before: The current client list has no sorting or filtering, is difficult to skim and read, and confuses advisers with the multiple onboarding status dots.
After: The new client list shows what each client's onboarding status is, and can be sorted and filtered by columns. An additional action "Complete onboarding" is added at the end of each row if the action is applicable. (Note that details on other columns have been removed to focus on onboarding-related columns).

3.2. For each client, assistants can follow the step-by-step pre- and post-investment onboarding process

An example user flow of a desk assistant reviews a user's pending onboarding status due to a missing Power of Attorney (POA). The assistant submits the POA and the status changes to waiting to be processed by iPartners.

3.3. Simplify the design of Client profile section, and mask sensitive contact information

Before: The design makes it hard to understand which fields are editable and which are not (for example, all personal details field are not editable after investor has finished identity verification, but it is not obvious from the design). Sensitive contact information is always shown.
After: The new design shows clearly which fields are editable and is neater. Sensitive contact information is masked for security.

  1. Improve the investment management functionalities

4.1. Redesign the client list to provide a richer and interactive overview of clients' portfolios with data and growth sparklines, sorting / filtering functionalities and additional user actions

Before: The current client list has no sorting or filtering, is difficult to skim and read, and confuses advisers with the multiple onboarding status dots.
After: The new client list shows each client's portfolio growth (illustrated by the sparkline charts and returns %) and can be sorted and filtered by columns (most importantly by portfolio holdings value and number of units held). Additional actions such as Download statements are also added.

4.2. Introduce a dashboard for each client with key performance information and upcoming events

The top of the dashboard provides advisers with the key performance metrics and asset allocation for each client, at the overall level (all entities) or at each entity level.

The bottom of the dashboard lists all upcoming events (maturities, distributions, capital calls). There's also a shortcut to edit investors' email preferences if they want to opt out of these email alerts.

4.3. Redesign the lists of current investments & realised investments for each client

The top of the dashboard provides advisers with the key performance metrics and asset allocation for each client, at the overall level (all entities) or at each entity level.

4.4. Add search and filtering of deals on the Investment opportunities tab, and surface the funding status of each deal

Before: The current Investment opportunities tab only has filtering by year, and shows no funding status of each deal.
After: The new tab design adds searching of deals by name or deal code, other filters by asset classes and deal status, as well as a funding status for each deal which helps advisers understand if a deal is under- or oversubscribed.

Stakeholder feedback

Natalia Metaute12:34 PM
Thank you for the beautiful designs 🥰 The dashboard is so clear now!
Norman King12:34 PM
Hey team! Great work on the FA project.
Nicola Joynson7:14 AM
Great news, GAF has confirmed they're buying the adviser and desk assistant modules for their platform!