Wealth Platform
Avaloq offers software and solutions for digital banking, retail banking, wealth management and more. Avaloq’s leading wealth management software provides efficiency to their relationship managers, portfolio managers, and investment advisors. Avaloq Wealth team approached Ginetta in late 2018 with the challenge to help revolutionize the professional money management experience and make it as easy as online shopping.
Together we helped Avaloq establish themselves as a leader in user centered design for financial softwares.
A management platform’s goal is to provide a clear list of daily tasks, notify users about warnings or alerts and to provide an opportunity to investigate & explore further into a client’s portfolio. A wealth management platform should do the same, however it should also include the possibilities to be simple & client facing, yet very technically accessible. The wealth management platform had two main users in mind, the Investment Advisor and the Portfolio Manager. Each with different daily monitoring and directory needs, but constantly sharing different tools such as asset recommendations, portfolio construction, analytic screens, and trading tools. The wealth management software from Avaloq is a massive technical product, which drove us to simplify it down into an approachable interconnected system. We began with the conceptual breakdown.
A large directory of shared information, investzone, recommended assets or themes, and documents.
The main management platform which is built specifically for an Investment advisor, relationship manager, portfolio manager, and chief investment officer.
Individual tools that will be shared amongst the bank and users. Ad-Hoc problem solvers and scalable overtimes
The conceptual breakdown also highlighted that tools were stand alone products and created clear paths of connections. With multiple discussions and reviews the launchpad was born to host all tools.
We built a new information architecture that helped us to reduce & combine existing screens. For instance the directory and monitoring screens were repeated for clients, mandates, and portfolios, but we were able to condense these into one screen. The screen can switch views depending on the scope selection (client, mandate, or portfolio). This further led to the invention of the scope manager.
Simplyfing a complex and regulatory driven task such as the construction of a portfolio, is really difficult. Ginetta helped us to focus on what is really needed on each screen and with each interaction, therby creating an experience that is elegant, easy to use and focused on getting the task done.
To begin tackling the design of several screens, together with Avaloq we determined user stories. The user stories allowed for a clear communication between Ginetta and the Avaloq product managers. We were able to set up a clear mission and also put the product manager in the seat of the user and realize quicker if features were missing. The stories also allowed a large project team in Ginetta to split the design into streams in order to quickly build and achieve the goals of Avaloq.
This story was built to help us design the Mandate Builder, by setting up clear personal story and user flow we could quickly approach an empty slate. The mandate builder was built in two sprints following ginetta’s process of “Think, Make, Check.” The mandate builder is a tool to help the invesment advisors create the mandate for their newly or exisitng clients. It was built to be a client facing product - meaning the the investment advisors also wanted a tool they could use together with their clients to be easy and visually pleasing.
A key product of Avaloq is their portfolio construction tool, the secret sauce of some banks. It allows the user to build up a new or edit an existing portfolio of their client. The tool needed to be at expert technical use and also easy for the client to digest. Through multiple iterations, reviews, and client check-ins the portfolio construction was built with visual excellence and expert quality. We were able to add many new design features that will provide avaloq with a leading advantage. For example providing the Investzone, the bank’s library of recommendation, and scenario comparisons at quick quick access when building a portfolio. In fact the entire tool itself transformed from an overloaded tab into a separate tool with the correct gears and tools for the user’s needs.
Through our Think, Make, Check cycle we could rebuild the Hub on a conceptual level and bring it to strong data visualizations. The analytics Hub was separated by tabs into Performance, Exposure, Risk, Simulation, and Timeline, allowing the user to view past and future performance of the client's portfolio. An interactive navigation provides users with real time answers to complex financial questions, by clicking through the data.The Analytics Hub brings the Avaloq software forward to provide expert usage and clear visualisations.
It is really a cool and powerful tool, I have never seen this kind of thing before
Because of the industry of Wealth Management we quickly found out it was impossible to rely on ordinary ways to recruit potential users. As a result we tested with multiple approaches:
User tests recruited by Ginetta to test interface and interaction patterns - mainly unmoderated tests online
Working directly with a client of Avaloq to understand requirements and usage
Recruiting an internal circle to interview and test early usability possibilities with experts in the field
The approach did lead to successful information gathering and access to insightful user feedback that helped our designs grow. By working directly with Avaloq’s client we could teach them the design thinking process, we were able to transform their way of working by understanding how they currently work with excel sheets and complicated documents, and design this into a simple user interface, which they will eventually benefit from. This process also allows Avaloq to build a stronger relationship with their client as well. The friends and family feedback loop proved to be really helpful, people could be more direct because of the personal relationship with the person who recruited them to give feedback.
A constantly invigorating and challenging project, where we can find creative solutions from different industries to help revolutionise wealth management to be user centered
Lei Zhang
Concept & Design
Lucia Sidler
Concept & Design
Galatea Mancini
Concept & Design
Nathan Ben Hamou
Concept & Design
Min Chen
Product Partner
Adinda Bruins
Product Partner
Silva Skenderi-Brown
Client Partner
Simon Raess
Strategy