Problem

During my time at Accenture, I worked in financial services specifically with the Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank.
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TD is one of the big five banks in Canada and striving to make online banking easier for customers - especially taking into account that most customers bank from the mobile web browser or app.

With numerous accounts being opened daily, the bank aimed to decrease the lengthy process as on average it took ~ 24 hours. This was due to the fact that customers had to go into the branch to authenticate themselves.

TD partnered with Verified.Me, an authentication application that safely and securely authenticates customers online through their Digital ID in the matter of minutes.

How might we seamlessly integrate Verified.Me into an existing application to enable customers to quickly and easily authenticate themselves and open up bank accounts from the comfort of their homes?

User Flow (Part 1)

For the first part of the deliverable, the task was to introduce Verified.Me as another option to open up a bank account - in addition to the traditional process - so that customers could understand the benefit of using it.

I facilitated a co-working session with the client and stakeholders to refine and get to the user flow below. It was clear that in part of the goal in presenting Verified.Me, I had to ensure that customer comprehended the USPs of the authenticator:

• Save time applying by having information pre-filled
• Open an account immediately from the comfort of your home
• Open an account safely and securely

Initial Designs

After facilitating co-working sessions with the client and stakeholders, I presented a few options that prioritized the Verified.Me application process in different ways.

A big piece of feedback was ensuring that customers comprehended the USPs of Verified.Me and thus not overwhelming them with too much content on one page - especially if they are ineligible to use the authenticator. Option 3 seemed to achieve this to a certain extent as it segemented out the information, however I took the feedback away to iterate once more.

Option 1:
Side by side of the two application options

Option 2:
Prioritizing the Verified.Me option

Option 3:
Showing one option at a time through tabs

A different approach

The previous designs stuck with the traditional styling and theme that an established bank tends to maintain - a bit wordy, and...dare I say, maybe not that exciting?

However, taking into account that overall TD is attempting to modernize in certain ways, I introduced another option with progressive disclosure. This way, customers are able to see their application options depending on how they answer a qualifying question, and can easily digest the USP for Verified.Me.

User Flow (Part 2)

For the second part of the deliverable, the task was to display the prefilled information on the application screens, highlight any missing fields, and inform the customer that certain fields may be uneditable (due fraud precautions).

Initial Design Options (Part 2)

The integration of Verified.Me, requires additional clicks within the application as the customer is redirected to the third party site to approve of the information being shared with the bank. In an attempt to cut down on unnecessary clicks, I condensed the three screen that display the pre-filled information into one. Understanding this could have strong technical implications, I brought a few options to the development team early on to get their input.

In the end, the developers didn't have enough space in their timelines to break from traditional design structure that was already in place. Instead of condensing pages, we made the existing pages as clear as possible which you'll see below in the Final Designs section.

Option 1: Displaying the pre-filled info at the top with an option to edit and fields that needed to be completed below.

Option 2: Keeping pre-filled and incomplete information together but with a global 'Edit' CTA.

Option 3: Not making any information editable, and only leaving the fields that needed to be completed available to fill out.

Final Designs (Part 1)

After progressive disclosure being the clear result of the moderated user test, I went into refining the designs using the TD design system and style guide. One thing to note is that due to not having permissions for the use of logos from other financial institutions, we had to use a bulleted list instead.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Final Designs (Part 2)

When it came to refining the second deliverable, I had to ensure that we were displaying the disclaimers clearly and that they weren't jarring to the customer. We settled on neutral colours to indicate different messages; blue to inform the customer that information had been pre-filled, yellow to inform that there were some fields that needed to be completed.

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

Outcomes & Successes

Integrating a third party application into a traditional bank has a lot of variables to consider - from tech infrastructure to legal considerations to fraud implications, however with lots of communication and collaboration, we were able to seamlessly ship this out! Here are some stats and info from the success of the project:

• For eligible customers, the time to open an account has been reduced from ~24 hrs+ to ~15 minutes
  
• The bank is now on par with their competitors by incorporating a Digital ID option (78% of Canadians do online banking)
• The amount of accounts opened in "Frozen" has reduced by ~7% in the first year
• Digital attrition has reduced by ~3.6M in the first year by opening more active digital accounts
• Users are able to quickly open bank accounts and immediately proceed with online banking from the comfort of their own home
• The customer experience has improved by allowing customers to prefill the application and authenticate themselves up front
• Foundational work has been completed to enable the bank to scale for complex applications that require more critical information
• A traditional bank take a slightly modern approach with the progressive disclosure