When I first encountered the lending and risks analytics web app, it felt like a tool that had so much potential but was weighed down by its own complexity. Built as an MVP by a team of engineers, it promised to revolutionize how lenders assess credit risk and manage portfolios, yet it fell short in execution. The interface was clunky, the workflows were cumbersome, and onboarding customers felt like solving a puzzle with missing pieces.
This redesign wasn’t just about improving how the product looked—it was about giving it a soul. I worked closely with a team of brilliant minds, including product managers, engineers, data analysts, and even the sales team, to transform the app into a solution that financial institutions could trust and love. Together, we created a platform that didn’t just analyze bank statements but also empowered lenders to make smarter decisions, faster. This is the story of how we turned a promising idea into a tool that works seamlessly, looks great, and delivers real value.
Product Designer
Cross-function team of Devs, PM and QA
3 Months
Lending is a cornerstone of financial services, but it comes with inherent risks. Loan and credit companies must carefully evaluate whether individuals or businesses qualify for loans while managing the potential for defaults. This process, often referred to as credit risk assessment, is critical to maintaining a healthy portfolio and ensuring long-term sustainability.
The challenge lies in the complexity of assessing borrowers’ financial health. For individuals, it involves analyzing bank statements, income patterns, spending habits, and debt obligations. For businesses, it requires a deeper dive into cash flow, revenue consistency, liabilities, and overall financial performance. Any misstep in evaluating these factors can lead to bad loans, financial losses, and reputational damage.
Traditionally, many lending companies have relied on manual processes or legacy systems to gather and analyse this data. These approaches are time-consuming, prone to errors, and often provide limited insights. With growing demand for faster loan approvals and the increasing complexity of financial data, these traditional methods no longer suffice. This is where the lending and risks analytics product comes into play. By providing real-time insights into credit risk and portfolio performance, the product helps loan and credit companies automate the decision-making process, improve accuracy, and reduce the risk of defaults. The redesign focused on simplifying this complex workflow, enabling lenders to assess qualifications with speed, precision, and confidence.
The initial version of the Credrails lending and risks analytics web app had significant potential but faced several challenges that hindered its adoption and usability. Designed as an MVP, the product lacked a user-centered approach, resulting in a platform that was difficult to navigate and failed to meet the expectations of both external users and internal teams. These challenges included:
Difficulty in Navigation
While the app offered a range of features, they were not organized intuitively, making it hard for users to find and use them effectively.
Poor Visual Appeal
The outdated design failed to engage users or build trust, which is critical in the financial industry.
Limited Analysis Parameters
Users needed more robust and flexible tools for evaluating credit risk and borrower data.
Negative Feedback
Both external customers and internal stakeholders expressed dissatisfaction with the app’s functionality and user experience.
Low Adoption
Customers were reluctant to use the app due to its inefficiencies, resulting in a limited user base.
Poor and Slow Onboarding
The onboarding process was highly manual and time-consuming, creating friction and discouraging new customers from the platform.
Transform the lending and risks analytics app into a user-friendly, scalable platform that empowers lenders to assess credit risk with confidence, streamline workflows, and make smarter, data-driven lending decisions..
Before diving into the redesign, it was essential to build a strong foundation by understanding the users, the business goals, and the challenges posed by the previous solution. My first step was holding a discovery session with stakeholders and the development team to align everyone’s perspective and objectives. This session helped identify key business goals, merge them with user needs, and map out challenges based on a UX audit of the previous lending analytics solution.
Through this process, I aimed to uncover usability issues, understand the pain points of both internal and external users, and define the key problems that needed solving. To achieve this, I utilized a combination of research methods, including user interviews, surveys, and a UX audit, which guided the direction of the redesign.
Interviews played a vital role in gaining qualitative insights into the needs and frustrations of the app’s users. I conducted interviews with employees of a lending institution, including loan officers and decision-makers, who rely on the platform daily to assess credit risks and make lending decisions. These conversations revealed several pain points:
• Difficulty navigating the previous solution, which made it challenging to access the data needed for quick decision-making.
• A lack of flexibility in analysis parameters, limiting their ability to customize risk assessments for different types of borrowers.
• Frustration with the onboarding process, which was time-consuming and required significant manual effort.
Surveys
To complement the interviews, I designed and distributed survey questionnaires to existing users and stakeholders. These surveys aimed to collect broader feedback on the product and validate findings from the interviews. The survey questions focused on:
1. Users’ biggest frustrations with the current platform.
2. The most critical features they needed to perform their roles effectively.
3. How they prioritized speed, accuracy, and flexibility in their workflows.
4. Overall satisfaction with the platform’s interface and usability.
The survey responses reinforced many of the themes uncovered during the interviews, particularly around usability challenges and the desire for more robust analytics tools. This combination of qualitative and quantitative research created a comprehensive understanding of user needs and business objectives.
By combining insights from interviews, surveys, and UX audits, I was able to define the key challenges and opportunities for the redesign. These findings served as a roadmap for creating a user-centered platform that aligned with both the goals of the business and the needs of its users.
“I spend so much time just trying to find the information I need. The platform has everything, but it’s buried under layers of complexity.”
“The current tool doesn’t let me customize the way I analyze borrower data. It feels like I’m working with a one-size-fits-all solution”
“Getting new users set up takes forever. The manual steps are overwhelming, and it slows us down when we’re onboarding a new team.”
“We need to make lending decisions quickly, but the platform isn’t intuitive. It’s hard to pull the data together when time is of the essence.”
The user interviews uncovered a range of critical pain points and opportunities for improvement in the previous lending analytics platform. A recurring theme was the difficulty users faced navigating the system. Many described spending too much time searching for critical information, a challenge that often delayed decision-making in high-pressure situations. For a platform meant to facilitate swift and accurate lending decisions, this inefficiency was a significant drawback. Another frustration centered around the lack of flexibility in analysis parameters. Users emphasized the need to customize credit risk assessments based on the unique circumstances of borrowers. However, the previous solution’s rigid structure forced them into a one-size-fits-all approach, limiting their ability to tailor evaluations to specific cases.
Onboarding emerged as a major hurdle. The manual process was not only slow but also created unnecessary friction for new users, requiring substantial effort from both the lending teams and support staff. This inefficiency slowed operations and negatively impacted first impressions of the product.
Speed and accuracy were also recurring concerns. Users stressed the importance of being able to make lending decisions quickly, but the outdated interface and lack of real-time data analysis made this challenging. Beyond functionality, they also desired a more modern and intuitive interface—one that felt simple, professional, and easy to use.
These insights painted a clear picture of the challenges that needed to be addressed, setting the stage for a redesign that prioritised usability, flexibility, and efficiency.
To ensure the redesign of the lending and risks analytics web app aligned with market expectations and exceeded user needs, I conducted a detailed competitive analysis. This involved examining industry-leading tools and platforms used by loan and credit companies for risk assessment and decision-making. By analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and unique features, I identified gaps and opportunities that guided the redesign process.
Existing solutions offered powerful data aggregation and analysis but often lacked user-friendly interfaces and customization options for lenders’ specific needs.
Most competitors focused on automation but did not provide the level of flexibility needed to tailor credit risk assessments to diverse borrower profiles.
There was a clear opportunity to deliver a solution that combined real-time insights, flexibility, and a seamless user experience.
The redesign of the lending and risks analytics web app followed a user-centered design approach, ensuring that every decision was informed by research, usability testing, and stakeholder input. The goal was to transform the app into an intuitive, efficient, and flexible platform that addressed the core challenges faced by loan and credit companies.
Discovery and Ideation
The process began with a deep dive into the user and business needs uncovered during the research phase. Through brainstorming sessions with stakeholders and the development team, we mapped out a clear vision for the redesigned platform. This stage involved defining the workflows, features, and interface components required to simplify navigation, improve flexibility, and automate key processes.
Sketching of Ideas
The design process began with translating insights from research into tangible concepts through sketching. Sketching allowed me to rapidly explore ideas and test different solutions for the challenges uncovered during the discovery phase. These early sketches served as the foundation for the redesigned web app, focusing on improving navigation, streamlining workflows, and enhancing data visualization.
Creating a design system for the lending and risks analytics app was a pivotal step in the redesign process. My goal was to establish a cohesive visual language and interaction framework that would elevate the platform’s usability while ensuring consistency across all components. With my experience in building design systems, I was excited to take on this challenge and craft something unique for this project.
However, with tight deadlines and the need for rapid implementation, we faced a critical decision: build a fully custom design system from scratch or leverage an existing library. After discussions with the team, we chose to adopt the Ant Design library, a robust set of pre-built components and styles, to accelerate the development process and meet our timeline. At first, I was hesitant, as I wanted the platform to have a distinct look and feel. But I saw an opportunity to blend the practicality of Ant Design with my vision for a clean, modern interface.
Using Ant Design as a foundation, I customized components to align with the product’s identity and user needs. Buttons, input fields, modals, and tables were tailored with subtle tweaks to typography, spacing, and colors, ensuring they reflected the professional and intuitive experience we aimed to deliver. The design system I created, though not fully custom, became the guiding framework for all design decisions, balancing speed and quality while maintaining a polished and cohesive aesthetic.
This hybrid approach allowed us to achieve the best of both worlds: the efficiency of pre-built components and the uniqueness of a tailored design. In the end, the system not only supported rapid implementation but also ensured the platform felt professional, modern, and perfectly suited to its users.
Prototyping was a pivotal part of the redesign process, enabling us to test ideas, gather real user feedback, and refine the experience with each iteration. By starting small and iterating based on insights, we transformed early concepts into a polished solution that aligned with user needs and business goals. Below is a video showcasing the evolution of the design through various prototyping stages.
To ensure the redesigned solution effectively addressed all the highlighted challenges, the product underwent multiple rounds of user testing with participants from various lending institutions. The goal was to assess whether users could complete key tasks independently, understand their interactions with the design prototype, and evaluate the overall usability of the product. Feedback collected during these sessions guided further iterations, refining the solution to better meet user needs.
The initial draft of the sign-up process was too long, leading to user fatigue during onboarding.
Users expressed the need for a feature to export an offline summary of analysis for reporting purposes.
There was confusion around identifying fraudulent bank statements, highlighting the need for clearer indicators or features.
Users found the navigation simple and intuitive, making it easy to locate and use key features.
Important metrics were effectively prioritised, allowing users to focus on critical insights without feeling overwhelmed.
The final version of the sign-up process was streamlined, creating a more efficient onboarding experience.
The newly introduced role and admin management functionality received praise for its utility and ease of use.
We refined the onboarding process to make it shorter and more intuitive, introduced export functionality for offline analysis summaries, and added clearer visual indicators to help users easily identify fraudulent bank statements—ensuring the platform was both efficient and trustworthy
Once the redesigned solution was developed, it was rigorously tested with users from multiple lending institutions to validate its effectiveness in addressing the key challenges. The goal was to ensure that the built product met user expectations, solved critical pain points, and provided a seamless, efficient experience for its target audience.
Usability Testing
Users were tasked with completing key workflows, such as navigating the dashboard, customising analytics, onboarding new accounts, and managing roles and permissions. These sessions helped us evaluate how intuitive the solution was in real-world scenarios.
The redesigned lending and risks analytics web app addressed the inefficiencies of the previous manual processes while introducing a streamlined, user-centered system to improve workflows and decision-making. By rethinking critical features and leveraging user research, I created a platform that was intuitive, efficient, and secure.
The manual process of registering lending institutions and validating their proof of concept (POC) was one of the biggest bottlenecks in the previous system. I designed a simple yet effective registration process that automated this workflow. Lending institutions could now register by completing a clean, intuitive form that captured essential details like full name, business name, type of business, and contact information. This approach not only saved time but also ensured accurate data collection, reducing friction for new users.
Users expressed a strong need for better visibility of previously uploaded statements. To meet this need, I designed a page where all uploaded PDF bank statements are displayed alongside visualized summaries. The system’s advanced data extraction algorithms parse these statements and generate a quick summary, displaying metrics like the total number of statements uploaded, statements analyzed, and reports generated. This visual feedback made it easier for users to track and organize their uploaded files.
Uploading bank statements was at the core of this platform, as it directly determined loan eligibility for individuals and businesses. I created upload modals for both single and bulk uploads, featuring an option to input passwords for locked PDF files. This streamlined the process and ensured users could upload and analyze statements with ease, whether they were processing one statement or hundreds.
One of the most transformative changes was redesigning the analysis screen. The previous version was cluttered and disorganized, making it difficult for users to make informed decisions. Based on user feedback, I prioritised the display of qualitative and quantitative metrics, grouping key insights into cards and tabs. The overview tab became a focal point, summarizing critical data from the entire statement analysis. By organizing information into clear sections, users could now quickly assess loan eligibility and other financial metrics, significantly reducing cognitive load.
The redesign of the Lending and Risks Analytics Web App transformed the platform into a more intuitive, efficient, and scalable solution for lending institutions. By automating manual processes, improving usability, and enhancing decision-making tools, the product achieved measurable success. The streamlined registration process significantly reduced onboarding time, making it easier for companies to start using the platform, while improved navigation and role management features increased user adoption and engagement. The redesigned bank statement upload and analysis flow allowed users to process financial data more quickly, improving loan decision turnaround time, while visual summaries and structured reports provided clearer insights, reducing data overload. The introduction of role-based access control (RBAC) strengthened security by ensuring the right users had the right level of access, increasing operational efficiency.
This project reinforced the importance of user research and iterative design in building impactful products. Understanding user pain points was critical in designing solutions that addressed real needs, leading to better adoption and overall satisfaction. Automation and simplicity proved to be a powerful combination, enabling faster workflows without compromising usability. Additionally, organizing financial data in a structured, digestible format helped users find insights quickly, improving decision-making efficiency. The project also highlighted the significance of cross-functional collaboration—working closely with frontend and backend engineers ensured that design concepts were not only visually appealing but also technically feasible, leading to smooth implementation. This redesign was a testament to how good design can transform a product, making it smarter, faster, and easier to use, while still delivering on business goals.
A B2B solution that helps financial institutions and lenders to manage risk and improve lending decisions.
In this case study, I explore the design process for a CSV file validator feature for a financial reconciliation solution. This feature focuses on identifying, managing missing transactions, duplicate transactions and truncated values.
