Digital Loan Application
Discover & Define
AS SBA experts we had a deep well of knowledge to guide the product definition along with additional research on Latino-owned small businesses and their needs.
Design Goals
Mobile-first: Easy to complete from your phone.
Go to the mat with legal and compliance to avoid walls of text and unnecessary click-throughs.
Major Curveball
Our concern about Fintechs was warranted but instead of competing with us to make loans, they were racing to build a service they could sell to our bank.
Our leadership drew a bright line: Ship this product in 6 months or they will buy a solution off the shelf. We got to work.
Design
Interactive entry point to engage the customer and draw them into the application.
We thought a lot about goal gradients and other ways to engage the customer along the steps.
Forms were kept as simple as possible and information chunking makes it feel easy.
Account linking keeps the friction low by fetching data instead of entering it.
Loans up to $500k could be approved in minutes.
Mobile layouts below.
Testing
Many rounds, achieving an 87.9% UX Lite score.
“Yes, it was very clear, especially the time needed to complete steps…I really do like...the time allotted."
We're not gonna make it...
As launch approached, engineering teams cut non-essential features to meet the deadline.
My team designed last-minute workarounds that still got us a fully digital SBA loan application.
When UAT issues emerged in the final week, the CIO delayed launch by one week. Despite leadership’s support, the delay felt like a team failure. We fixed the issues and launched successfully one week later.
Conclusion
$125M incremental loans added to the portfolio, beating our target by 25%
$750K new net income/week and growing
Bank net income up 15% overall
The design was a success as well; as the first instantiation of our design system it received universal acclaim from leadership for its simplicity, usability, and how it extended and refined the bank’s brand.
And in addition to the high testing scores, one of our customers completed the entire application experience from their mobile phone, checking a box on my team’s original design goals (the customer’s loan was approved).
Description
Live Oak Bank
8 Jan 2024
New SBA rules allow for new entrants into small dollar lending. Live Oak Bank must quickly build a loan product pipeline to maintain the competitive moat.
Role
- Head of CX leading a team of 7
- Cross-functional alignment with partners
- Accountability for design outcomes
Business Goals
- Turn the new rules into a line of business
- Leverage automation and third party APIs
- Build it on Finxact, a real-time Core
- No additional capacity or headcount