Background & Challenge
I was tasked with working alongside the Evans Hunt team as well as the ATB Financial internal team to work on the mobile first retail mortgage lending aspect of ATB’s new customer focused website.
The challenge was to align the external e-commerce mortgage section with one that worked with in-branch processes, and internal banking functions. We found a large disconnect in how information was gathered online, and the experience of customers needing to make an appointment only to have the banking employee need to gather information already submitted by the customer, and re-enter the information into the internal system. There was also a concern with how comfortable customers were with applying for a mortgage online. It’s often the largest purchase of their life, how easy and comfortable can we make it?
Process: Heuristic Evaluation / Competitive Analysis
Self serve retail mortgage lending was an entirely new concept for ATB, so we didn’t have much internally to compare it to, as it stood, the website simply gathered names, addresses, contact numbers, and tried to channel customers to a branch specialist.
A heuristic analysis against any internal processes was tough with not much to compare. We did speak with some internal mortgage specialists to gather some information on their pain points, and if they had any feedback from customers. Visually a new site was coming online, and we would be working from an existing design system, and adding to it, so visually there was little to do at this stage.
We needed to compare what we were up against so it was time to start looking at other offerings from our competition. Fortunately it isn’t hard to find a bank offering an online mortgage product, which also meant we were a little late to the game. A benefit to this was that it was fairly simple to try out these products and go through the experiences ourselves and learn from it, and gave an opportunity to improve our product based on our findings.
We found that we had some similar ideas, and disagreed with some, and found some opportunities to fill in gaps that had not been thought of yet by our competition, but we needed to find out who we were actually targeting with the product we were going to create.
Process: User Personas / Journey Map
We needed to determine who we were building this product for, and which market we would eventually target for the MVP. We had some existing internal data to work with, and worked with the research team to start building some in depth personas of who we would be considering in the experience. Home buying is a very serious topic, and we had to understand what the worries our customers had, how far they wanted to go online, and really understand who they were and how they were thinking.
We developed a few varied market segments, and some of the personas that would fall into them. Because we had some constraints from the business end, our scope was narrowed into first time homebuyers only, which had an effect on which personas would have a higher chance of being our customers.
A journey map was then created to better clarify the situation to the various stakeholders, and for ourselves to reference in the process.
Process: User Flows
Fortunately we had a user matrix to help as a foundation, which we used to build off of. With that we could start moving into the user flow and ideate on the various scenarios we were likely to encounter.
Process: User Flows
Some interesting findings came out in the process, things we had not anticipated. The complexity of a joint application mortgage and confidentiality of financial information between spouses, partners, parents, co-applicants, and the timing in which they sit down to do the application. We discovered it had to be split into two flows, and place a huge emphasis on privacy if if was a joint application.
Process: Concept Experiences
With the bulk of the work being done for us with the new visual design, we could use that as a foundation and build our product from the existing design system.
Our research determined that while certain customers wanted to do research to determine if they pre-qualified for a mortgage, many were happy to apply on the spot - literally while viewing a house. This drove us to go with a mobile first approach that could address various scenarios.
If it was a joint application, one of the customers could fill it out while in a potential home, and an email was generated to their co-applicant to either fill out and complete on mobile, or at a later date at home. In the case of a single applicant, they could get pre-qualified for a mortgage while physically touring the house they were wanting to purchase. We felt this was an ideal customer experience, and something truly helpful to users. This was repeated to us in testing.
We had to consider a few items, as finance can be a touchy subject, so in the case of a joint application, privacy legally had to be a very high priority, between the financial institution and the customer, and between customers. Money can be a pain point in any relationship, and this was always under consideration.
Key Observations:
financial privacy concerns - emotional and legal
money within relationships can be a difficult talking point
customer driven experience while browsing for homes - experience is more than digital
ability to hand off a joint application with ease
clear policy regarding credit bureau and financial checks
positioning as a ‘helping hand’ lender
content should be overall positive and encouraging, even with undesired result customer acquisition can be obtained
responsible lending practice working in conjunction with business strategy
Process: Concept Experiences, Business Analysis, and Risk.
Ethics and good business practice are a key point in the ATB business model, as well they should be for experience design. This came into play when discussing if a customer did qualify for a mortgage, how do we approach that number?
From one perspective allowing customers to take their maximum limit financially is the best business case short term. Long term it can be a large problem for the business if someone can no longer pay their mortgage, with risk and mitigation research, it was determined to allow customers to take the maximum if they chose, but educate them on the potential risks of borrowing too much. It was determined this would be the best case scenario for the user, and the business, and have the highest outcome of customer satisfaction. Ethics and education are also introduced to help customers with long term financial planning.
It was determined internally and validated with customer interviews this was the ideal scenario.
Being able to offer expert advice on finance, and help potential clients was essential to the customer experience, and business goals. Positioning helpful advice, while being positive opens up opportunity to increase customer engagement in person even if there is a disagreement between joint applicants or borrowing amount.
Results:
After completing the required files, further user testing that validated our hypothesis, the experience was presented to internal stakeholders for approval and was accepted. Internal stakeholder review viewed the experience as easy, and very applicable to potential clients and appreciated the strategic thinking of how to turn a potentially bad customer experience of being denied a mortgage pre-approval into an engaging learning experience in branch. This builds trust, and allows ATB to realize their vision of providing expert advice by bringing in possibly new clients by helping them with their finances to get them into a position where they can purchase a home, possibly not now, but in the future.
In the case of an approval, the expert advice ATB can offer is doing their best to offer what is best suited for the potential customer even if it means not lending as much as possible the first time around, it was deemed less risk, and higher customer and business satisfaction rates would follow long term.
Client: ATB Financial
Market: Finance
Work: Product Design, UX Design, Content Strategy, UI Design, Service Design
Agencies / Teams: HUGE, Evans Hunt Group, ATB Financial Internal