Building a Wealth Management Super App – One click at a Time

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This case study explores the Super App concept; what factors have helped fuel their popularity and what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.

This case study explores the Wealth Management Super App concept.

What factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.

Financial apps have grown from 16% in 2015 to 64% in 2021. The evolution of the financial super app is getting closer every day — an all-encompassing ecosystem that allows you to oversee and manage yours and others finances.

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The pandemic has changed people’s attitudes towards digital financial services. According to a survey by Economic Times, COVID-19 has forced more than 62% of global users to take more control over their spending using tools like wealth management apps.

The Gossler Seyler Associates Brand

Gossler Seyler Associates is a fictional brand. The UI and other visuals have been changed to protect the innocent.

What’s a financial super-app? 

Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. This case study explores the Super App concept, what factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.

A financial super-app is an ecosystem of features and services that are, of course, built around the user’s needs.

Put simply, a financial super-app is a careful balance between user experience and interconnectedness. Within one ecosystem, super apps typically enable;

  • In-app payment (incl. Scheduling)
  • Notifications on mobile
  • Financial Health-check (incl. Subscriptions)
  • Portfolio Management 
  • Account Types
  • File Storage
  • Industry insights

    Why Develop a Wealth Management App?

    Solving problems for clients - Wealth management UX involves creating a product that helps clients track their portfolio, buy and sell commodities and monitor and manage their investments. They enable clients to manage their and their clients finances properly, become more disciplined and financially intelligent. Put simply, convenience.
    Wealth management UX involves creating a product that helps clients track their portfolio, buy and sell commodities and monitor and manage their investments.

    Solving problems for clients

    When a relationship manager (AKA portfolio or fund manager) has too many clients to offer personalised advice, they want to allow their lower-value clients to manage and monitor their own finances.

    Wealth firms want to stay relevant in our neobank world while retaining their clients. There is a generational change happening as Gen X and Millennials accumulate wealth. These customers are digital natives and want more control over their finances.

    Wealth Management firms are living in the past as far as digital offerings and design! Time to modernise and break inefficient patterns.

    The benefits of wealth management applications for users are impossible to exaggerate. They enable clients to manage their and their client’s finances properly and become more disciplined and financially intelligent. Put simply, convenience.

    High Demand Among Users 

    Controlling one’s finances is now a lifestyle choice.

    Money management is in high demand since it allows users to monitor investments directly on their devices. Clients may also use high-end tools, like benchmarking or currency exchange tools.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. This case study explores the Super App concept, what factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.
    In-app financial benchmarking involves running analyses to compare one company’s standards to another.

    Room for growth

    Users often abandon the apps for finance management.

    Insufficient functionality used to be prevalent, but today’s super apps aim to deliver customers’ expectations and beyond. Super apps eliminate the need to install several financial applications with different USPs. Users can securely Login with 2FA, register their devices and drill-down on Portfolio Details all in the same app.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is the standard security process that provides two different ways to authenticate to your financial app service. In general, the first factor to authenticate is by using a username or email address and a password, while the second is typically a mobile phone.
    Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is the standard security process that provides two different ways to authenticate to your financial app service.

    Finance Management Must-Have Features

    Creating a themed premium white-label product for clients starts with brand. A Digital Design System is ‘the’ tool to kick-start this process, but UX designer also need to be mindful of;

    Personalisation

    Personalisation is a significant feature in many mobile applications, enabling avatars or customising what is essentially a client’s most personal device (i.e. their mobile) is a sure-fire way to build and maintain engagement. This can be sustained by future-scoping chatbots, saved filters and other unique features.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. This case study explores the Super App concept, what factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.
    Filters are a great tool to narrow down high volumes of content and to surface the most relevant results.

    Multi-factor Authentication

    Securing your users’ accounts in a money management app is incredibly important, as they contain clients’ private information such as expenses, income and bank account details.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. By offering two-factor authentication options ensure UX does not force the users to choose one 2FA method. Use the same format for email, app and desktop and give the option to have recovery/backup codes that are downloadable.
    By offering two-factor authentication options ensure UX does not force the users to choose one 2FA method.

    Portfolio Aggregation

    Use Open Banking as the basis of your product so that clients don’t have to look elsewhere. Including on your offer general overview visualisations, performance, allocation and positions for example. It involves consolidating financial information from different sources, all behind the scenes. This is where the real value is, this backend consolidation aggregates all information at your clients fingertips, builds engagements and ensures they keep coming back, all in one app.

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. This case study explores the Super App concept, what factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.
    This is the return on an investment portfolio, with single or multiple assets, measured over a specific period of time and currency.

    Wealth Management Design Best Practices

    Applying UX best practices to your app is critical. Here are some tips for ensuring a best-in-class design.

    Game-Changing Data Visualisation

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. This case study explores the Super App concept, what factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.
    Data visualisation – Make it easy to view and comprehend trends, outliers and patterns.

    Offer your users an irresistible alternative to old-school budgeting practices. Create eye-catching charts, infographics and dashboards with key metrics. Keep information clean, accessible and understandable.

    Ensure Consistency

    During your Discovery phases, ensure your decisions are made with meaningful UX top-of-mind. Consistency is king. It includes your corporate colours, fonts, application structure, and buttons. Do not overload your UI or impede tasks with visual clutter or ill-conceived colour palettes.

    What we are talking about here is a well conceived Design System.

    Building a Branded Experience - Creating a themed premium white-label product for clients starts with brand. A Digital Design System is 'the' tool to kick-start this process.
    Creating a themed premium white-label product for clients starts with brand.

    So, what are the lessons learnt?

    It’s important to me, as a UX designer, whatever the industry to always build the experience around the user’s needs. Technically, it is a challenge to push through that ‘interconnectedness’ but what are other design learnings take-outs;

    Have a Design System that rocks

    Implementing a white-label to a product designed by somebody else, you need a slick working Design System. Take that time to learn the difference between Design Tokens and Local Components, to know where to use service-primary and to become that go-to guy, from your clients perspective, for all things UX.

    Designers are from Mars…

    It’s the plain dirty truth but your clients don’t care about the nuances that UX designers do. For their super app, PMs, Stakeholders and other non-creatives will be focused on features, features and features. That said, stay true to your profession, put your big boy head on and re-enforce a truly Agile mindset then start delivering early and fast from day one.

    If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

    Building a Wealth Management Super App - One-click at a Time. This case study explores the Super App concept, what factors have helped fuel their popularity and from personal experience of designing many financial Super Apps for various wealth management clients, what modern-day users now expect from this new digital experience.
    White label products, by their nature, have configuration options built-in.

    Scrum is a fast-moving train, if you’re not working lean, then you will get left behind. Educate clients in your kick-off meetings that this isn’t print and that software development in its true form, is iteration. Adopting an MVP mindset is key to not derailing the software development life cycle (SDLC);

    • Resist implementing client request UX changes ‘…because they can – rather than they should‘
    • Push-back on a low value configuration
    • Limit re-writing error messages that add little UX value

    Thank You

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