Case Study: Autonomous system for a personal-investment-finance.
Product proposal targeted to the UAE market.
Let's understand the Autonomous Finance to begin with!
As well put by Gaurav Sharma:
Autonomous finance reimagines the whole idea of financial services delivery by integrating technology at the heart of each system.
Using AI and Machine Learning, ‘Autonomous Finance’ can remove human input from decision-making, enabling every customer to have a virtual private banker making all financial decisions for them.
As the financial-services industry rapidly modernizes with the introduction of real-time fund transfers, the proliferation of mobile apps, deployment of chatbots and AI-based solutions to manage customer complaints as well as API-led banking, the era of a customer making decisions about their money is behind us.
Future applications will be designed around every customer’s unique journey, specific portfolio, and financial needs. The goal is to improve fund allocation, bring efficiencies and reduce the possibility of human error by letting advance algorithms run tasks such as portfolio management or bill payment automation.
The digitization of everything and “changing consumer expectations” is transforming digital-finance. The millennial’ consumers already trust recommendations generated by AI on how to manage their finances.
As the understanding was clear, the next step was to define the goals and align with the project:
High-Level Design Goals and Objectives
These are the high-level goals and objectives:
- Understand the user expectations and decision-making factors.
- Translate autonomous design principles for financial products.
- Propose a product concept (Mobile application).
Methodology followed to achieve these, is Design Thinking:
Stage: Empathize
This was needed to be done in two segments, market and user, in order to define the connection:
Market Dynamics
- UAE — Israel’s peace deal
- COVID-19 and accelerated tech trends
- Expo 2021
In general, (and in my personal opinion) the world politics and policies are on the cross road which is reflecting on this region as well, and one of the highlight is UAE — Israel peace deal.
The military alliance will also reflect on speedy technology growth and integration as israel is home for players in hi-tech.
Pandemic has forced us to go touchless. Which shows the high demand in going digital, adapting automation and autonomous systems.
Expo 2021, which is promising an approx. 6.4% GDP growth (which is huge) is being marketed as — make expo an engine of global innovation that acts as a catalyst for creative and scalable solutions. Which also means the bridging gap between cutting edge tech and current situation so that more and more business will bloom in the region.
Industry
To understand the relevant banking industry practices I had a word with one of my acquaintances who is a data scientist in ENBD along with secondary research. And the relevant insights are these:
- Risk prediction department, recommendation engine, fraud and compliance department and loan department are the lighthouse segments of autonomous systems.
According to the National News, Pandemic has caused the savings boom in the UAE which reflected in the new customer acquisition, growth in personal banking and investment services.
- It is expected that up to 48% of Middle East clients will move to brokerage firms, while 40% are likely to favor independent advisors in 3 yrs based on these factors: Quality and reputation, products, advisory capabilities, personal attention, pricing, or technology.
- Era of ‘invisible banking’ and ‘autonomous- finance’.
Technology
According to the press release by EY, Sarah (A wealth and asset management leader) writes and I quote : As clients redirect their asset management towards alternative business models, the demand for digital solutions that offer 24x7 anytime, anywhere access on any device is on the rise — in fact, 20% of clients in the Middle East say that they would switch wealth asset management firms today for such a service.
In addition, there is a fast-growing preference among clients to use mobile apps not only for executing transactions but for opening accounts, monitoring results, rebalancing their portfolio, and learning about products and services. The future success of wealth management firms in the Middle East, in an increasingly high-tech sector, will be determined by their ability to keep up with the pace of change and reconfigure their digital delivery model to meet these expectations,”
When I was reading this, I could relate my meeting with an investment advisor last month and following exactly same path while making decisions (we moved to a smaller house, cut downed expenses and focused on investments). This led me to analysing the application and process which we use currently.
This is not exact competitive analysis or brand positioning. But, there are apps developed by the fund houses to automate certain processes which previously needed to be done with human interference.
But now, Once you are onboard, you get access to this tool for free which can help you picture and plan your savings and investment as per choices and requirements.
It has API integrated with major banks for auto-monthly funds distribution. However, the funds selection and movement is still a manual process.
While reading more and seeing around, I realised that this is the time to make tech, process and systems more empathetic and humanised in order to gain user’s trust (which is one of the biggest influencing factors in the decision-making). What does that mean? — to me it is — reducing cognitive load, having humanised and interactive tone, considering emotional needs, optimised, effective and personalised reinforcement, smaller and effective user journeys and focus on building trust over market share!
Process went ahead with the primary research in order to understand customer requirements and their understanding of the subject and how the financial advisors are managing existing clientele and process.
Interviewing financial advisors will help to develop AI algorithms and logics, where as interview with end user will help to design product suitable to the environmental and mental model.
Interview guideline for the financial advisor is here and the insights are as following:
Interview guideline for the potential end user is here and the insights are as following:
Based on the secondary and primary research, it was clear that target users are turning to financial advisors and this demand will only rise in coming years. That is the scope I have considered for the product suggestion.
Based on the insights, I mapped the possible different target segments from investment advisor’s perspective and selected the most relevant archetype for further study i.e. Indian expats of age between 25 to 54 as it is the highest in the UAE population as per published statics by global media insights.
Design decision-1
- Product proposal for autonomous SIP (Multiple fund houses)
- Targeted to the Indian expats below 40 yrs living in the UAE > Middle East
- Product will be easy to learn, minimalistic, interactive and with recognisable interface and communication (Lesser cognitive load)
Scope statement
How might we enhance the experience and assistance of SIP for target users with the help of autonomous system through an intuitive, seamless and personalised digital product?
Stage-Ideate
Part of the high-level goals and objective includes analysing autonomous design principle from banking/financial product-service perspective, and here is how I have translated them for this project before moving with ideation. I have also considered them in the proposal ahead.
Proposal fall under mid autonomous section.
Drafted features based on the insights are as following:
Sitemap
Delta is a proposed brand name to connect with calculated finite increment.
Set goals and my calculator will have an interlinked functionalities but the separate tabs for ease of access.
Setting scenario based UI requirements for retirement goal for the next step.
Detailed requirements of different tasks will be drafted once complete ecosystem is at place.
Retirement screen — will display the recommended financial goal to maintain existing lifestyle for retirement at 50yrs of age by default with option to change.
Next obvious step was to define color and visual elements with wireframe and prototype/MVP:
Growth Map
- Team discussion — Perspective of different expertise and feasibility.
- User testing.
- Study other segments and subsegments to find out more on the behavioural pattern (age, nationalities, preferences, goals).
- Make strategy inclusive of insights.
- Define competitive positioning (USP).
- Define mutual goals based on business, user and technology goals.
- Define and develop a required customer journey maps.
- Defining user testing strategy and stages.
- Time lining process ahead.
Complete Case Study
Thank you for reading 😊
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