AOA- Account opening & Activation
JP Morgan Chase
The Challenges:
There was a looming "if it aint broke" mentality, Buy in was hesitant, because the existing experience was seen as “good enough”. On the engineering side, the experience was proprietary, meaning everything was pieces and unique code, not everything was tagged so the data was not consistent. Looking larger, each product family had its own experience.
The Project
The DAO product initially focused on optimizing the account opening experiences for checking and savings. Previous versions of these experiences under performed due in part to the excessive number of required steps in the flow,. There was a “if it ain’t broke” mentality initially. The experience was primarily. Designed 11 years previous to only be on web and only on desktop, for a new to bank customer it took roughly 17-19 minutes and had a 70% pend potential . If—for existing customers it wasn’t that much better. At the time the majority was opened in a branch and services like “funding” had to be in person as well. the online. The existing experience opened roughly 300,000 accounts annually, less than 10%
Role and Process
The start of the project, meant that we were bare minimum in support and people, aka it was me, one product person, and part o two developers time. I acted as design lead, partner, researcher and project manager for the design side of this project, along with product and engineering we dove into the data and research to start to piece together the optimal end to end user experience for consumer banking account opening. Applying design thinking, and stepping into the shoes of the customer, highlighted the gaps and need for revision. A competitive analysis, a dive into existing data and customer feedback reinforced the need for a better way. We could see the most common drop off points, and through customer interviews, we could hear what they wanted and needed. A big hold in any potential changes is step that takes all info through legal, partnering with legal and engaging early took the inactivated potential delays out of the equation and if anything made for a more harmonious engagement all around. This gesture became part of process and encouraged team cohesion and fluidity later, when our scope grew
Results
The team was able to reduce the amount of “weight” by about 70%, making the NTB experience about 5-7 minutes in length, this was also ADA and legal complaint at delivery. The experience was mobile and desktop friendly and would be applicable in components to the native experience as well a later version for bankers in branch. Because of the “renew”, modernization was possible and we were able to place industry standard services, such as check depositing, biometric id, and adding a joint customer to the account The previous pend rate, went down to about 25% but the user was actually able to know why, which kept the customer engaged versus, just walking away. We later built in the ability to opt for a “better fit” product.
Since the first product (late 2018), the AOA experience was soon proposed for all of consumers product, credit card, lending then partner programs, commercial, small business, and even the investment products from both Chase and JP Morgan. As a triad we had set a success measure of a 2% spike, in online account opening which if memory serves was roughly 3000 accounts, what we got was over a million opened in 4 months.
Redesigning Chase’s digital origination flows drove measurable growth, with 8.6 million new deposit accounts opened in one year—a 13% year-over-year increase. Application enhancements boosted submission rates by 1.1% for new customers and 1.6% for existing ones, resulting in roughly 15,700 additional completions per month (a 5% lift). Beyond conversion gains, the initiative established a repeatable optimization framework that reduced friction, standardized design patterns, accelerated time-to-market, and reinforced a culture of collaboration and innovation across the organization.
This initiative was initially conducted as a pilot project, and its success led to the exercise being applied to all of the consumer products at Chase.
With the expansion across products, many of these learning would become foundational the design system for AOA and subsequently the foundation for form building and info gathering
More about team planning and growth in the next example
Key words/terms:
UX Design, Research, Data Driven, Design Thinking, Design systems, project planning, Team growth, wins all around, Partnerships, Power of story telling, Making history with history