Case Study 2: Wealth Management Onboarding Experience, Global Financial Institution

Designing for High-Stakes, High-Performers

Due to confidentiality agreements with past clients and employers, some details, visuals, and data have been generalized or recreated.

 
 

  • Sole designer end-to-end: strategy, UX, visual design, production direction, and launch

  • Experience was built in ~ 4 months with annual renewals over several years.

    • 98% of users reported improved understanding and readiness to act

    • 13% increase in perceived helpfulness vs. legacy experience

    • Higher-than-average completion rate tracked over 3 quarters

 

The opportunity:

When high-performing employees qualify for an exclusive wealth management program, they're handed a complex financial decision with real long-term consequences. Make the wrong choice about how to defer compensation (or fail to understand the tax implications) and it could affect their finances for 5 to 10 years or more.

Our client, a large financial institution based in Canada, had an aging HTML experience that was no longer meeting the moment. Engagement was dropping. Employees were leaving the experience without understanding what they were actually deciding. We were at risk of losing our long-term client to an outdated solution.

Our approach:

I proposed a complete creative refresh: not just a visual update, but a rethinking of the narrative voice, user flow, and emotional framing of the experience. High performers are busy people who need to absorb complex information quickly, often under time pressure. The redesign had to feel like a knowledgeable colleague walking them through their options, not a compliance document.

The result was a voiceover-guided interactive experience that led users through the program's two distinct paths based on their eligibility and goals, delivering personalized information in a warm, clear, and confident voice.

Video has been shortened from the original and client-specific information and branding removed.

What I did:

  • Reviewed user feedback from the legacy experience to identify the specific points of confusion and drop-off driving churn

  • Scripted and storyboarded the full experience end-to-end, across both eligibility paths

  • Designed the visual experience optimized for desktop, balancing professionalism with personalization appropriate for a high-net-worth audience

  • Directed voiceover talent for tone, pacing, and consistency across the experience

  • Built the interactive experience using eLearning software with a curated team of freelancers and SCORM specialists

  • Coordinated with developers to QA SCORM compliance and analytics integration before launch

Impact

98% of users reported improved understanding and readiness to act

We saw a 13% increase in perceived helpfulness vs. the legacy experience

  • Completion rate exceeded the 25–30% benchmark for excellent performance on decision-support tools of this complexity

  • Exponential growth in unique user engagement tracked over 3 consecutive quarters

Completion rates