Launching an investment tool for the fintech industry

Project Support (UX)

Smart Invest by Irish Life

Jan 2020 - current

Smart Invest Desktop and Mobile with transparency.png

About Smart Invest by Irish Life and Wealthsimple

Smart Invest was created as Irish Life's new digital investing platform focused on making investing simple and accessible for beginner investors.

To bring this new type of product to the market, Irish Life partnered with Wealthsimple, a leading online investment management service in Canada, the US and the UK.

The partnership between Irish Life and Wealthsimple combined strengths of both companies to bring the first robo-advice product to the Irish market.

Working with stakeholders at both companies, it was my responsibility throughout the project to test and iterate on Wealthsimple's award-winning digital onboarding experience. I was also responsible for making sure that the product branding felt recognizable as part of the Irish Life's product offerings. This was to leverage the company's strong reputation as a trusted Irish entity.

Simple and accessible

award winning digital onboarding experience

Beginner investors

Digital advice process

Understanding the need for a robo-advice product

Growing financial freedom

Lack of investment knowledge

Time-poor for 'life admin' tasks

Research done by the Irish Life strategy team showed that people aged 25-35 were experiencing more financial freedom than ever before. However, they didn't really know where to start and they didn't have time to become experts, either.

Irish Life's traditional investment model meant that would-be customers had to meet in person with a Financial Advisor, taking time and energy from their on-the-go busy lifestyles to tackle the "life admin" of setting up their investments.

In Ireland, there was a gap between the products and services offered by traditional investment institutions and the needs of a growing customer base.

Supporting UX research and design initiatives

As the Project Support UX Designer for the Strategy and Innovation team at Irish Life, I supported the user experience research and design of a new app to digitize the financial advice process.

Benchmarking competitor products

Creating process flow maps

Designing prototypes for web and mobile

Conducting over 50 usability tests

Irish Life's

recognizable and trusted brand identity

Wealthsimple's

Designing for web and mobile content

Working with stakeholders at both companies, I tested and iterated on Wealthsimple's award-winning digital onboarding experience. This meant clearing Know-Your-Customer (KYC) onboarding documentation with Irish Life's compliance team, consolidating both Wealthsimple and Irish Life's financial advice models, and checking in with users to ensure the product felt simple, friendly, and empowering.

Due to Irish Life's strong reputation, Smart Invest needed to feel recognizably part of Irish Life's brand. It needed to feel easy on the eyes, friendly, and simple. To achieve this, I worked with an advertising agency and Irish Life's marketing team to design the new logo and imagery.

The result

Smart Invest was released in September 2019 as a beta product. Within the first week, it had over 300 registrants with contributions of €53.4k. Initial feedback was that the onboarding process felt simple, easy to use, and quick. Investors felt that they had been guided along the investment process in a professional way that put them at ease.

Since it's initial launch, Smart Invest has gone through many iterations. It is still a thriving product on the Irish market, and has moved from beta phase to a nationally accessible investment tool.