Financial accounts
panel

Turning a fragmented financial experience into one shared direction for customers and more than 20 partners.

The situation

People with more than one account could not see everything together. Each part of the site worked differently, so customers had to jump between separate experiences to understand what they owned and what they could do next.

I worked with a small design team and more than 20 partners across the organization. My role was to help the group understand what was really going wrong, turn competing needs into a shared direction, and choose a useful first step that the larger system could support.

Why it was messy

The obvious problem was navigation. The deeper problem was fragmentation.

Customers were trying to create one financial picture from products, account types, data, and actions that had been designed in separate parts of the company. A navigation fix alone would not address the inconsistent information and mental models underneath it.

Signal

Research changed how we understood the problem

Research suggested that customers experienced the company as several separate companies instead of one. Behavioral data showed them moving between different parts of the site just to finish simple tasks, while feedback and support tickets helped confirm that the problem was common.

Signal 1

The problem seemed deeper than navigation

People wanted one reliable place to see what they owned and know where to act.

Signal 2

People think about goals, not company departments

They naturally grouped accounts around goals like retirement, investing, and banking.

Signal 3

Outside accounts belonged in the same picture

When people linked outside accounts, they expected to see them next to the accounts held with the company.

Before and after

These videos show the fragmented starting point and the proposed shared account panel.

Before

Accounts were spread across the site

People had to move between different areas to understand balances, performance, and available actions. The site reflected the company's internal structure instead of the way people thought about their finances.

Before. People had to piece together their financial picture across separate systems.

After

One shared view of every account

The proposed panel put internal and outside accounts in one consistent view. It gave people a clear place to start before choosing what to do next.

After. The panel shows the full relationship in one place and makes common actions easier to find.

From signal to direction

Each step reduced a different kind of uncertainty

The work was less about finding one perfect answer and more about helping a large group understand the same problem, make deliberate tradeoffs, and move toward a first release the system could actually support.

01: Signal

Find where people lost the thread

People usually came in with a simple goal: check a balance, review performance, or make a transaction. But they often had to jump between several areas to find the right account and complete the task.

Numbers did not always match, labels changed, and the site's structure made people learn how the company was organized. Mapping that journey helped make the fragmentation visible to the team.

Typical customer journey showing sign in, site switching, information finding, and switching again to take action
The journey helped us see how often people had to switch places before they could understand their accounts and act.

02: Decision

Choose a useful first step

We could not fix every system at once, so we focused on a shared panel that showed all accounts together. It created one reliable starting point without requiring the organization to rebuild every downstream experience first.

Now, Next, Later roadmap for the account panel
The roadmap helped us keep the first release focused without losing the longer-term direction.

03: Tradeoff

Protect the purpose of the panel

I advocated for including outside accounts so people could see their full financial picture. At the same time, some capabilities had to wait because the underlying account data was not yet consistent enough.

I also worked with others to set goals and anti-goals so the shared space would help people understand and act instead of slowly becoming another place for ads and unrelated messages.

Account panel goals and anti-goals
Simple goals and anti-goals helped the team protect the purpose of the panel.

04: Direction

Turn many perspectives into one direction

Testing suggested a clear theme: people felt like they could finally see everything in one place.

I helped more than 20 team members align around the first release and the longer-term direction. The result depended on the work and judgment of many people across the organization, but my responsibility was to help make the problem, tradeoffs, and path forward understandable enough for the group to move together.

Unified financial accounts panel showing activity across all accounts
The account panel concept showing activity across accounts.

Evidence

The experiment pointed in the right direction

The available results suggested improvement across navigation satisfaction, support demand, and cross-service task completion. I am keeping these claims directional because the exact effect sizes are not included here.

↑Navigation satisfaction

The experiment pointed toward better satisfaction with finding the right place.

↓Support calls

It also pointed toward fewer calls tied to trouble finding information.

↑Task completion

More people completed tasks that crossed different services.

What I learned

  • A navigation complaint can point to a deeper trust and systems problem.
  • Making complexity visible helps large groups make better decisions together.
  • Big systems can move toward one vision through small, useful releases.
  • Shared tools need clear rules or they slowly lose their purpose.

What I would do next

  • Add more common actions to the shared panel.
  • Track how people switch between and filter accounts.
  • Keep aligning account data across systems.