Streamlining Payments and Processes for Financial Securities
Simplifying Complex Financial Operations Through Thoughtful Design
Client: Wilmington Trust/M&T Bank
Tools: Figma, Miro, Webex
Role: Discovery Interviews, Workshop Facilitation, Layout and Design
Timeline: Six Months
The Context
In the world of finance, few products are as intricate and impactful as Asset-Backed and Mortgage-Backed Securities (ABS/MBS). Picture the financial landscape portrayed in The Big Short—a world of complex, high-stakes financial instruments with a lot of moving parts.
Now imagine a painstaking, manual process to manage payments for 25,000 engagements. This repetitive and error-prone workload happens every month, year after year, for up to 30 years per loan, consuming thousands of hours annually.
My product owner and I worked together to design a solution that could reduce operational risks, improve efficiency, and lay the foundation for scalable innovation in a highly regulated environment.
Collaborated with the product owner to brainstorm and iterate on wireframes in Figma, using the bank’s design system to ensure consistency. Where gaps existed, I designed and contributed new components, aligning the final prototype with both user needs and business goals.
This manual workload consumed thousands of hours annually, introducing inefficiencies, human error, and risks. Recognizing the opportunity to simplify this process, my product owner and I decided to take action. Though not initially greenlit by the business, we recognized the immense value in automating these manual tasks and saving thousands of man-hours annually. Our mission was to design a solution that could reduce operational risks, improve efficiency, and lay the foundation for scalable innovation in a highly regulated environment.
The Challenge
- Processing: Over 25,000 payment memos annually across multiple business lines, each requiring meticulous setup and review.
- Manual Data Entry: Ingesting, mapping, and routing payments often depended on inconsistent, manual data entry and outdated systems.
- Integration: Any solution would need to integrate with outdated, complicated systems that the bank relies on.
- Complexity: Creating an automated, reliable experience that could handle these challenges while minimizing risk to the business.
The core of the problem was that the current process relied heavily on manual entry, which introduced inefficiencies and increased the likelihood of errors. The challenge was to simplify this process without sacrificing accuracy or introducing additional risks.
Every client uses their own Excel template. The key was the ability for relationship managers to upload the client’s first Excel document at the beginning of an engagement. They map each relevant cell to the database, establishing a unique template without changing anything for the client. In subsequent months, when the Excel document was uploaded, the system automatically transfers the data into the custom template. This eliminated the need for manual data entry and peer review every month. Checks and balances were put in place to verify the client's document had not changed.
Jesse has done an incredible job putting this together. It’s a VERY nuanced UX, but every time we identified a challenge or an opportunity, Jesse came up with something better than what we originally contemplated.
