What free digital experience
will leverage planning engagement to drive Net New Assets for digital investors?

Problem definition

We were tasked with exploring a free digital experience that will maximize planning engagement for digital investors. Research showed that clients with a financial plan feel more confident about their financial future. Financial plans serve to generate next best actions for clients that take them towards their financial goals while utilizing Schwab products and service, with potential to drive Net New Assets (NNA).

UX Researcher
Product Manager
Software Engineers (2)
Product Designer
Product Owner

Role and skills

Senior UX/UI Designer
UX Research
Workshop facilitation
Content writing

Team size

We spoke with several financial planners and learned we needed to have these essential elements:

Discovery

  • Give the client the full and dynamic picture of their financial health

  • Minimize initial time to value and provide ongoing value with personalized insights

  • Engage clients on their own terms and in their own devices.

MoneyGuide Pro not doing the job for our clients

Discovery

After speaking with our colleagues (6 subject matter experts in planning and open account space), we determined that we needed more information about what it is about planning that drives positive outcomes. We looked at the current financial planning experience MoneyGuide Pro (MGP) and started interviewing clients to understand how and why they used this product.We also asked customers how their order was and only collected data on the meh through hated it comments.

How can we turn anxiety into confidence?

Ideation

The team developed 14 hypotheses to determine a perspective of what our clients need today and in the future. These hypotheses were derived from previous research and findings from other Schwab teams. We reached out to our clients to see if our hypotheses were accurate and to provide responses on other questions we had. We learned from client feedback and interviews that our clients are "anxious when planning for their financial future". Next we synthesized our client feedback and brainstormed ideas.

Here are a our final key learnings

Build and implementation

Keep it simple: Our clients appreciated not cognitively overloading them with content. It is important to keep the design simple because it is easier to process in the brain. Less is always more.

Consistency across the omni-channel experience: Our goal is to create a seamless experience across all devices. Make sure this is done without the client knowing about it.

Navigation should be simple and intuitive: Learnability of our design is key for its success. Our clients should intuitively be able to navigate through our app via clear pathways and be able to complete all primary tasks without requiring any explanations.

Minimize data input: If you know what the form fields should say due to the information that was previously collected, make sure to autofill the forms. Our goal is to have our clients do less work, but earn more in the end.

A “lighter” planning experience can provide great outcomes: Setting up even one goal will provide value—and once clients see the value, they are motivated to do more.

A few desktop designs

Results

Business impact

  • 12 weeks from project inception to product recommendation

  • Recommendation was to build the Digital Goal Experience product with the help from the Schwab Investment team

  • 80 final net promoter score

  • 100% final easy score