David Ma - PC Aggregation

Portfolio Checkup App

Account Aggregation

Overview

Glossary of Terms

The Client - the entity licensing this product to service their customers
The Investor - the customer of the client and end user of this product

About the Project

The investor completed their risk tolerance questionnaire and is now asked to link their investment accounts. By providing the login credentials to their accounts, the product can download their holdings information and provide an analysis of their portfolio. If the investor is unable to provide that information, they have the option to input their holdings manually.

Where this project belongs in the product

The Problem

For the Investor
The investor wants to provide their holdings information so that the product can provide an analysis of their portfolio.

For the Client
The client wants to know the investor's account information, such as account types and balances, for marketing purposes.

My Role

Research
Product strategy
Information architecture
Interaction design
Prototyping
User testing
Visual design

The Process

Step 1: Met with the Client & Defined the Problem

Our team met with the client and learned that they had a marketing strategy that targeted investors who met certain criteria. For example, they planned on putting in more effort to convert investors who had a high amount of investable assets via email marketing or phone calls. They might recommend a different service all together for investors who had a very high net worth. But in order to do this, they needed a way to track the investor's holdings.

Step 2: Interviewed Investors & Defined the Problem

The VP of Product and I spoke to potential investors and learned how they preferred to provide their holdings information to us. Here's what we learned:

62% wanted a way for the product to automatically pull the data from their investment accounts.
38% wanted to input their holdings information manually because they did not feel comfortable providing access to their accounts. Some in this group said they might start off with the manual option first and link accounts later if they felt comfortable.
However, nobody wanted to provide their holdings information without fully understanding what they were getting out of it.

Step 3: Met with Engineers

Engineers informed me that they were using a 3rd-party API to pull data from the investor's investment accounts. I learned about the API and how the product had to function in order to work with it.

Step 4: Defined the Goals of the Solution

The VP of Product and I defined a set of goals that this feature had to achieve:

Provide investors two options for providing their holdings information: automatically download and/or manual entry.
Collect and deliver the data needed by the API and then display the data that was sent back. The front-end had to be in-sync with the API.
Convince the investor to provide their holdings information and help them understand the value of this process.

Step 5: Analyzed Competitors

I looked at a few competitors who had account aggregation and asked potential investors to give me feedback on them. Some of the products used the same API or a similar one to ours, so it was helpful to see how they designed their front-end to work with the API.

Step 6: Brainstormed Solutions & Collected Feedback

I worked with the engineers to brainstorm on the key components of the solution. Here's what we decided:

The page opened with a brief explanation about the value of providing the holdings information. This page also served as the repository for accounts that were added by the investor.
If the investor chose to add accounts, they started off by selecting the institution that their accounts were held. They had the option to manually enter their holdings if they did not want to electronically link their accounts.
If the investor chose to electronically link, they entered their login credentials.
The API returned a list of accounts available. The investor selected the account(s) they wanted the product to analyze.
The investor returned to the repository page and had the option to link more accounts or move on to the analysis.

I created sketches of the steps and collected feedback from stakeholders.

Step 7: Created Wireframes, Collected Feedback, & Tested

I worked with engineers to define the details of the experience. They noticed that when they did a search for a brokerage, such as "Fidelity", the API returned 10 variations of the brokerage. I suspected that investors wouldn't know which one to choose and confirmed that was the case. To reduce the occurrence of this problem, the product displayed a set of popular brokerages that investors could pick from to bypass the search functionality. Stakeholders provided me with the top 8 brokerages to display based on research that they did.

I worked closely with engineers to determine what data was available to display in each step of the experience. I interviewed investors to determine which of that data was relevant to them. The API returned a ton of data but only a very small portion of it was relevant to the investors for this use case.

I worked with stakeholders to optimize the copy that informed investors the value of providing their holdings information. We had to find the right balance between being informative but also keeping it short and concise. The following solution tested well with investors and met the requirements of all the stakeholders.

Step 8: Created Prototypes, Collected Feedback, Tested, & Iterated

After stakeholders approved the wireframes, I created prototypes with increased fidelity. I tested the prototype to validate its usability using interview sessions and unmoderated tests.