From 2012 to 2014 I worked as part of a small team to build and launch an investment product that was the first of its kind.
Balmain Private is a financial services company that offers investors the opportunity to invest in individual commercial Mortgages. In simple terms, Balmain lends people money for commercial property and then offers investors the chance to invest in these Loans and share the upside.
Mortgage Funds are not a new concept but they are generally pooled funds, which means that it’s a bunch of loans put together. By offering investments in individual Loans, Balmain Private gave investors the control to make their own decisions.
Balmain Private was also committed to bring the whole process online, something that hadn’t been done with this type of product before.
They are comfortable with technology, they are the first to have the latest gadgets. For them the draw of the product would be about the technology and innovation behind it. They cared about the returns but would be more willing (and financially able) to take the risks on an un-tested product.
This group is older (over 55s) and less at home with technology. For this group, simplicity and clarity would be the key.
Trust is a huge part of any product or brand but it is especially important for financial products. In 2012, when we were developing this product, we knew building trust was going to be difficult - lots have people had been burnt badly in the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). There are a few way we overcame this challenge.
Balmain Private didn’t have the backing or brand of a big institution, but Balmain had been around for over 30 years and had a solid reputation among a subsection of our target audience. A key part of the marketing and launch strategy was to leverage our reputation among this audience to build momentum and prove success early on.
The events of the GFC drove investors to take more control over how they invested their money. Balmain Private aimed to capitalise on this by letting investors choose the properties they invested in. We provided them with all the information they needed to make an informed decision and put the control back in there hands.
The finance industry is full of jargon and people within the industry love an acronym. It was important for us that this didn’t bleed into the product or any communication with end-users. If it was unavoidable (often due to regulatory factors) we worked hard to educate users.
These were the two main principles that drove all our decisions. We needed to make it easy for investors to compare options and make informed decisions.
We identified five key pieces of information that were most useful during the browse and comparison phase so they needed to be presented clearly on the listing screens in a way that made comparison easily: Target Return, Term or Expiry Date, Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) an important measure of risk, Asset Type (eg. industrial, residential etc), and Asset Location.
On the Loan Detail page we could provide more information to help investors evaluate and compare the risk of each investment. It was important here to name and display things consistently to make comparison easy.
To help investors make their final decisions, we also provided a much more detailed document as a pdf.
Colour was used to help users navigate through the product. It also helped users browse and compare investments and quickly see where they were invested.
Summaries of key information like current balances, average returns and recent or upcoming transactions made it simple for investors to get a snapshot of their account without having to dig through tables of numbers.
Some transactions required some level of manual transfer or approval process behind the scenes. Use of italics was reserved for pending transactions or any figure that could be affected by pending transactions.
We’ve all been there, you are 10 minutes into a long form and you’re asked for some information that is stuck in a file somewhere, or that you know your accountant would know. If you’re lucky the form has some sort of save function so you haven’t entirely wasted your time. But in most cases, you have to start from the beginning.
By listing all the information applicants need before they hit start, we were able to simplify the process. This resulted in less drop-offs and greatly sped up the conversion time.
Due to regulations, there was only so much we could do to reduce this but it was important to remove as many fields as possible.
This is especially important for sensitive or more obscure information. It also helped with the previous point, because if we couldn’t explain simply why we needed something then we removed it.
After the application was completed online, our applicants were required to transfer funds into an account before they could start investing in properties. We used the confirmation page, and a series of emails to guide applicants through what was required. We also gave them access to login to the platform straight away, they could check their application status and start to get familiar with the system. This resulted in fast conversion times once the initial funds had been processed.
This was a key differentiator for Balmain Private. Most comparable financial products at the time used paper forms and often required full identity documents again. From the underlying structure of the fund to the user interface, Balmain Private was designed to make this process a simple as possible.
Two Factor Authentication was used to improve security and trust.
Being clear with button labels and providing reassuring microcopy helps users feel more confident in the process and the product. For example, letting users know that will have a chance to check and confirm the details in the next step allows them to relax a bit because they know when they have to focus.