A Fortune 500 financial services organization began modernizing its digital platform to migrate legacy systems and improve transaction experiences.
Within this effort, our team redesigned the investment exchange flow, allowing participants to move investments between funds across complex account hierarchies. The goal was to simplify a high-stakes financial task while creating reusable patterns for future transaction capabilities.
Participants needed to complete complex financial transactions while navigating layered account structures.The legacy experience presented large amounts of information at once, increasing cognitive load and making it difficult for participants to confidently complete transactions.Key issues included:
• complex account and investment hierarchies
• high cognitive load during transactions
• limited clarity before confirming financial decisions
• participants leaving the flow to research investments elsewhere
The design approach focused on reducing complexity while maintaining the clarity required for financial decisions.Key strategies included:
• structuring the transaction into clear steps
• introducing progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load
• improving navigation through complex account hierarchies
• providing clear summaries before transaction confirmation
Responsive web transaction experience including:
• routing and transaction entry
• account selection
• exchange-out fund selection
• exchange-in allocation
• review and confirmation
• post-transaction status trackingHigh-fidelity designs, interaction patterns, and prototypes were delivered in collaboration with engineering and design system teams.
The investment exchange redesign is part of a broader platform modernization initiative. Before our team joined the effort, foundational work across the transaction ecosystem had already begun. Our design pod aligned with that work while focusing on defining the exchange experience for the first phase of the platform migration.
Before our team joined, the broader program had already started defining the transaction ecosystem and modernization strategy.
• Early transaction concepts and routing approaches
• Initial platform architecture and migration planning
• Alignment with the platform design system
Our team reviewed and aligned with this work to ensure consistency across the platform.
Working within the Account Management team, we collaborated with product, engineering, CX, and compliance partners to understand the transaction ecosystem and define requirements for the exchange experience.
• Reviewed the legacy exchange flow
• Identified participant friction points
• Defined scope for the first platform release
User testing helped reveal how participants interact with exchanges in real scenarios.
• Participants often leave the flow to research investment details
• Complex account hierarchies create confusion
• Step-based progression improves confidence during financial decisions
These insights helped guide the structure of the redesigned flow.
The team explored multiple interaction models and iterated on prototypes to reduce complexity in the transaction experience.
• Tested different structures for navigating account hierarchies
• Introduced step-based progression to reduce cognitive load
• Developed responsive designs across desktop, tablet, and mobile
The experience is currently moving through cross-functional reviews and phased delivery.
• Reviews with product, engineering, CX, and design system teams
• Accessibility and compliance validation
• Gradual handoff of approved components for development
The exchange experience will be introduced in phases, starting with the initial platform migration and expanding to support additional transaction types.
This flow structure establishes a reusable framework for future transaction experiences across the platform.
Landing page
Account Selection
Exchange Out
Exchange In
Review Transaction
Confirmation
The legacy experience surfaced too much information at once, creating confusion during complex financial transactions. The redesigned flow introduces a guided structure that helps participants move through investment exchanges with clarity and confidence.
The new experience restructures the exchange flow into clear, guided steps. By simplifying navigation through complex account structures and surfacing key information at the right moment, participants can complete transactions with greater clarity and confidence.
The redesigned exchange flow validated the step based approach and introduced scalable interaction patterns for complex financial transactions. Early program metrics indicate meaningful improvements in how participants navigate and complete exchange transactions.
The exchange framework lays the foundation for additional transaction capabilities across the platform.
Future phases include:
Extending the framework to support allocations and rebalances
Completing the platform migration across transaction experiences
Validating improvements through live experimentation and testing
