belindahjonescreative
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Building a KYC Client Onboarding Portal (6mths)

Overview: As a UX Research and Service Designer, I tackled the challenges of the Know Your Customer (KYC) process in the commercial bank, aiming to streamline onboarding, reduce inefficiencies, and enhance the client experience while ensuring compliance.

The Challenge
Onboarding clients to products and services took 30 days, with clients submitting sensitive information via insecure channels like phone and email. The process involved frequent back-and-forth exchanges to correct errors, and clients had no visibility into their application status, leading to frustration and delays.

My Approach
To better understand user pain points, I conducted field studies, contextual inquiries, and usability studies observing how clients and internal teams navigated the KYC process. I also facilitated co-design workshops with stakeholders to align on key challenges and explore potential solutions. These insights informed a streamlined, more transparent workflow that balanced user needs with regulatory requirements.

The Solution
Collaborating cross-functionally, I designed a more intuitive and automated KYC workflow, including:

  • A streamlined user interface for secure document submission and verification

  • Automation of repetitive tasks, reducing errors and delays

  • Enhanced communication tools to provide real-time status updates

  • Document classification upon client submission using AI

The Impact
The digital solution reduced client onboarding times by 76% and boosted internal process efficiency by 83%

 
 
 

Figma wireframes for Usability Testing

Usertesting.com

Key screens in the experience

 

Key Insights and Recommendations

1. Populate existing client information in the form
2. Include descriptions for key terminology
3. Need for a comprehensive progress tracker covering all steps (7 steps)
4. Need for a non-citizen micro-experience for both key executive and beneficiaries
5. Need for a bulk upload capability
6. I recommended iterating on the proof of concept, adding features toward an MVP, and conducting discovery research to address knowledge gaps about other KYC user groups and the end-to-end experience.

Research allowed me to thoroughly explore the KYC space and gain extensive knowledge. I collaborated with my product partners to develop a clear problem and outcome statement.

Problem Statement: KYC is a manual, time-consuming, and risky process with clients often submitting incomplete information through non-digital channels, lacking visibility. CSAs repeatedly request missing details, and KYC Ops manually verifying them. With 50% of cases incomplete, delays halt products like loans and treasury management services. The goal is to streamline onboarding while ensuring compliance with anti-money laundering regulations.

Outcome: An intuitive and user-friendly digital interface that verifies client input, while guiding the client through the experience with the help of a progress tracker, allowing the client to save and exit if needed. Clearly communicating the security protocols to instill confidence in the new process.

 

Journey Mapping & End2End Service Blue Print

Journey mapping from key users

 
 

KYC End to End Service Blue Print

Opportunities Revealed/Validated by the Journey maps and Service Blueprint

 

  1. The KYC process is linear, time-consuming, and highly complex, requiring manual rechecks by various user groups throughout the entire journey

  2. A need for specialized KYC training for the CSAs’ who are at the frontline

  3. Opportunities to digitize the collection and validation of information

  4. Escalation of high risk cases

  5. Ensure the complete collection of documentation for downstream use

  6. Use of machine learning to categorize documents upon client submission

 

Facilitation of Cross Functional Workshops

As design lead I planned and facilitated a product requirement workshop with both my product and tech partners for both associate and client facing experiences

 

Planned and facilitated a Prioritization workshop using a 2x2 matrix on what features should be included in the MVP

 

Roll-Out of MVP 1

To meet design quality standards, I coordinated with content, UI, design system, and accessibility teams through three rounds of reviews, making updates to Figma before handing it off to the tech team. I conducted user acceptance testing (UAT) on the experience, testing the overall functionality and usability of the webflow. This also included verifying the adherence to design standards.

We faced challenges:
1. We didn’t have strong product support and had to lean in and work directly with subject matter experts, which caused a bit of friction as feature prioritization was lacking
2. To address the drop in client signups caused by a new compliance consent form, I began reaching out to relationship managers and treasury management consultants to bridge the gap and bring in more clients. I successfully recruited two clients who provided valuable feedback
3. Legal/AML/Compliance: there were multiple sign-offs required to go to market, creating huge delays
4. The legal language in use was not user-friendly, and efforts to modify it were challenging. We had to coordinate with the communications team to engage with legal, which caused additional delays in delivery

Metrics: An 83% increase in internal process efficiency and a 76% reduction in onboarding time for clients.

Final Thoughts:
1. The entire experience was an excellent learning opportunity. Information gathering/product requirements: for the next MVP I jumped in and begun to collect requirements for the MVP2 and conducting workshops with both product and tech.
2. For the following MVPs I begun setting clear expectations as to what design needed to have in place before we could move forward
3. With the little information I had gathered from previous working sessions, I jumped ahead and begun ideating, sharing sketches and low fidelity wireframes for quick product and subject matter expert feedback
4.I couldn't have accomplished this without the relationships I had built. I quickly realized that cultivating strong connections early on is crucial for success, and it's something I value deeply