Opportunity
From the market research conducted on the mortgage industry, we discovered that there was no simple way to verify the amount of money needed for down payment as a part of the mortgage application process.
User research
After understanding common pain points in the mortgage process, we dug in deeper into the down payment verification process. We interviewed multiple mortgage brokers across Canada to collect details on why this was the case. Here’s what some of them said:
- “Getting bank statements are painful”
- “Lots of back and forth with getting bank statements”
- “Down payment is difficult, a nightmare to track, as they may be in various accounts”
Additionally, we also found out the following pain points for both the broker and borrower:
- Brokers: need to educate borrowers on how to properly retrieve information for down payment verification
- Brokers: documents returned from borrowers are often inconsistent, in the wrong format or orientation, not sufficient for verification, e.g. they’re missing bank account numbers or missing client name
- Borrowers: need to log into their online banking platform or enter their bank's branch to collect 3 months of bank statements for all accounts, then send all documents back to the broker
- Brokers: risk losing the borrower to their bank if they go to their branch to retrieve statements
Design workshops
To start collaborating on the project, we ran numerous design workshops over the course of a week and invited numerous stakeholders (executives, business, development, customer success, and designers) to discuss, debate, and determine the opportunity, outcomes, metrics for success and failures, user flows, and initial UI. We focused individual workshops for both the broker and borrower personas.
Business case
- Deliver a valuable product to brokers by November 2018 – our flagship web platform was not ready for release at the time and we wanted to get to market quicker using a mobile app
- Product to be a gateway to the Lendesk web app and drive sign ups
- Deepen relationships with mortgage brokers and borrowers
- Brand marketing opportunity
Ways we could succeed
- 100 users by Christmas 2018, 400 before March
- Recurring usage
- Chatter in social channels, articles in publications
- Paying customers
- Positive app store ratings
Ways we could fail
- Third party connection is buggy and slow – to get to market quickly we integrated the mobile app with a service to help us retrieve bank statements
- Blow the deadline
- No demand, seem as spam, or forgettable
- No trust from borrowers and brokers
- Lenders don’t accept docs as valid
- Cost issues
- Security issues or sign up problems
- Poor marketing and reviews
- Competition gets there first
Visual design
After iterating on initial workshop sketches, I worked with the design team to debate the best possible paths and copy for the screens that the broker would interact with.
Broker facing: mobile app screens
Borrower facing: responsive web app screens
Marketing and branding
Project impact and learnings
In our opinion, we delivered Level on time, without issues, and had some positive feedback.
Success metrics
Target: 100 users by Christmas 2018; 400 before March 2019
Result: 121 users by January 8, 2019 (121%); 202 users by March 2, 2019 (51%)
Target: Recurring usage
Result:
- 318 requests sent by 97 unique users
- 26% of requested documents were shared – the broker could have sent documents to themselves to continue processing the mortgage application
Target: Paying customers
Result: We offered Level free of charge
Target: Chatter in social channels, articles in publications
Result: Level was mentioned in a very popular Facebook group for mortgage brokers in Canada
- “Thank you Lendesk, for making mortgage brokering easier. The bank statement retrieval service by Lendesk’s Level was a breeze, especially for the client side.”
- “Getting bank statements is probably the hardest thing to do so this could be a game changer.”
- “Amazing - we make all clients do it.”
Ways we could fail
On the other hand, we also had some issues. The reliability of our third party service however, was not that great. Our broker customers often suffered technical issues with documents and often received partial accounts from a borrower. These issues were problematic as missing documents wouldn't paint a clear picture of how much borrowers had for down payment.
Additionally, building Level as a mobile app seemed to be less desired than we expected as most brokers are desktop users when it comes to work productivity (this came out in our research as well).
Risk: Third party connection is buggy and slow – to get to market quickly we integrated the mobile app with a service to help us retrieve bank statements
Result: "I’ve used it and had either no docs come through, all come through or only half of the documents come through. It’s a great idea but hoping they are able to work out all of the kinks”
Risk: No trust from borrowers and brokers
Result: “Tested it out on myself as I have accounts at a variety of institutions. Problems I had: for multiple accounts it took some time and was susceptible to timing out...Sometimes deposit account and credit card downloaded but investment account did not... I don’t want to provide a technology solution to customers that is supposed to be simplify process and reduce effort only to have it be a frustrating experience that isn’t reliable…”
After being in the market for 2 years, we decided to deprecate Level due to declining usage and reliability. We learned a lot from it and incorporated the lessons and data as a part of the Lendesk flagship platform.
Iterations that never made it
These dream iterations were solely based on visual improvements and not feedback. When we started Level initially, we decided to release the tool using older components in the interest of time. Ideally, if the project wasn’t deprecated, we would have loved to make improvements.
The primary focus for these changes were to:
- Reduce distraction
- Focus on content
- Emphasize interactive elements
