Finance | Product Design | B2C | Financial Wellbeing
Portfolio Health Check System
Client
Commonwealth Bank
Timeline
9 months
Role
UX Lead
Overview & Challenge​
The challenge was to help customers understand what makes a healthy wealth portfolio and then guide them toward the right actions. Commonwealth Bank's My Wealth platform, an online service for self-directed investors, needed enhanced capabilities to allow users to assess, compare, and evaluate their portfolios without hiring an advisor.
Key Challenges​​
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- Explaining complex financial concepts in accessible ways
- Helping users identify strengths and weaknesses in their investment portfolios
- Creating tools sophisticated enough for experienced investors yet accessible to novices
- Designing self-service assessment tools that provided genuine value without advisory services
- Balancing comprehensive analysis with simplified user experience
- Developing modular components that could be maintained and evolved independently
- Supporting users in taking action based on assessment results
My Approach & Contribution
Following a lean startup methodology (build-measure-learn), I prepared the My Wealth team for their Horizon 2 capabilities, which would expand the platform's functionality beyond its initial release.
Key Activities
1. Led a series of strategy sessions with three product owners to define customer problem statements, user stories, and concept maps preliminary to design sprints
3. Prototyped all concepts and tested them with potential or existing customers of My Wealth
5. Combined features from different modules to create the most valuable solutions
7. Advocated for Continuous Improvement and supported the team in maintaining a lean infrastructure
2. Created concepts for over 10 different portfolio health modules
4. Prioritised modules based on testing results and technical feasibility
6. Collaborated with an Agile coach to ensure UX perspectives were represented early in projects
Portfolio Health Check became a section of My Wealth that enabled customers to see the health of their entire portfolio. Each Health Check module contained the information customers needed to assess, compare, and evaluate their portfolios or specific components. The modules followed a progressive learning and improving approach, so Health Checks became a frequently consulted area within the site.
Results & Impact
01
- Created an innovative portfolio assessment system enabling investors to evaluate their financial health without advisor assistance
03
- Guided better financial decisions by providing actionable insights
05
- Established a framework for progressive financial education through interactive tools
02
- Designed diagnostic tools that identified improvement opportunities in investment portfolios
04
- Developed modular components that could be evolved and expanded over time
06
- Increased user engagement and retention through valuable self-service features
Key Learnings
Make complex financial concepts clear without dumbing them down. With good visuals and plain language, we helped investors grasp sophisticated concepts they could actually use, striking a balance between simplicity and depth.
Connect "what's wrong" directly to "what to do about it." Investors wanted both understanding and action steps - knowing why something matters and exactly how to fix it. This combination proved much more valuable than either part alone.
Define the problem thoroughly before designing the solution. By spending more time with product owners pinpointing exactly what customers struggled with, we created tools that addressed real needs rather than assumptions.
Zafer’s strategy sessions with various groups like Property ensured that we were able to scope solutions that were do-able in tight timeframes, but more importantly in a way that met our customer segment needs. The property section, for example, was vague and unclear as it was a new area for the Bank, and Zafer helped us to narrow down and clarify how we could develop workable solutions.
Keith Meyer, Manager Customer Experience, My Wealth
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Early Wireframes of Shares Diversification Health Check
We have created 5 major customer journeys driven by the research and ran several workshops with the bank's SMEs to validate and enhance these journeys. After these efforts customer journey mapping became the standard before starting any strategy roadmaps for digital initiatives.
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Final Wireframes and Visual Designs
Zafer has worked with our Agile coach as well as teams to ensure that a UX perspective is represented early on in the projects we do. He is an advocate for Continuous Improvement and supports our overall team in maintaining a lean and nimble infrastructure.
Keith Meyer, Manager Customer Experience, My Wealth