Financial Accounts
Panel

Designing a system-level account panel that allowed investors to see their full financial picture across fragmented financial services.

Overview

People who had more than one account couldn't see everything in one place. Each part of the site worked differently, so they had to jump around to understand their finances. This made things confusing and frustrating and left blocked from getting the full picture.

I led a design team and cross-functional stakeholders in presenting the first iteration of a unified accounts panel for a website redesign.

Business Importance

This confusion hurt trust and led to more support calls. The goal was to help people find what they need faster, complete tasks on their own, and feel confident using the site.

Discovery

People said the company felt like “separate companies” instead of one. Data showed users switching between experiences just to complete simple tasks. Feedback and support tickets confirmed this was a real problem.

Finding 1

Clients framed the issue as trust and clarity, not navigation

People wanted a single source of truth for what they owned and where to act.

Finding 2

Users grouped accounts by life purpose, not internal service model

Participants naturally organized accounts into themes such as retirement, taxable investing, and banking.

Finding 3

External accounts strengthened the mental model

When clients linked outside accounts, they expected to see them alongside internal relationships.

Customer Journey

People usually came in with a simple goal—check a balance, look at performance, or make a transaction. But users often had to hunt for where to do it. They had to jump between areas to piece things together, find holdings, or make sure they were looking at the right account.

The hardest part was inconsistency: numbers did not always match across pages, labels changed, and the system's structure surfaced internal complexity instead of the customer's mental model.

Typical customer journey showing sign in, site switching, information finding, and switching again to take action

Product Thinking

We didn't have time to fix everything, so we focused on one step forward: a shared account panel that showed everything in one place.

We had to make tradeoffs. For example, users could not yet group or customize accounts because the underlying data was not consistent across systems.

Now, Next, Later roadmap for the account panel

Key Decisions

I pushed to include outside accounts so users could see their full financial picture. I also helped set rules so teams did not turn the panel into a place for ads or messages.

We treated the panel as a tool to help people take action faster—not just a list of accounts.

Account panel goals and anti-goals

Key Outcomes

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

I also helped align over 20 team members around a shared solution, which set the foundation for improving navigation and task completion.

Unified financial accounts panel showing activity across all accounts
Unified account-panel concept showing activity across accounts.
↑Wayfinding CSAT

Improved navigation satisfaction in the experiment cohort.

↓Support Calls

Reduced navigation-related contact drivers.

↑Completion Rate

Increased journey completion for cross-service tasks.

Learnings

  • Navigation complaints often signal a deeper issue—in this case trust and an incomplete mental model.
  • Progressive unification works when you name the long-term vision and ship a first step that delivers immediate clarity.
  • System utilities need governance or they quickly accumulate competing stakeholder priorities.

Next Steps

  • Expand visibility into consistent actions across services.
  • Define shared instrumentation for account switching and filtering.
  • Progressively align data definitions across platforms.