How Might We help communicate financial planning best practices to advisors so that clients earn the best outcome?

 

Role:

Service design lead, thought partner, workshop facilitator

Partners:

Investment Executives, Insurance Executives, Business Ops Leads, UX Researchers, Content Designer

Activity Overview

  • Stakeholder Management

  • Generative Research

  • 1:1 Team Interviews

  • Framing the Challenge

  • Research Review & Synthesis

  • Co-Creation Sessions

  • Synthesis

 

Opportunity

The goal of the project is to articulate and quantify how our most successful and innovative advisors are deploying our unique financial planning strategy into a cohesive, ecosystem-wide service strategy.

Approach

I developed a brief with three core sections: Define the Art, Define the Science, and Design, Test, and Iterate. The first section was time to develop our goals, success metrics, and current state, while the latter two were to envision the future.

Impact & Results

The impact of this work was clarity and a common vision for our leaders. I delivered a current state presentation that included personas, a blueprint, and next steps for the team. My final vision deliverable was a presentation that included a future state journey map, storyboard, and personas.

 

My Process

 

Initial Conversations

Design Directors, Investments Vice Presidents, and Insurance Vice Presidents were in discussion about a project to harness the company’s unique strategy, which is giving clients the ability to have insurance and investments in the same portfolio.

After I was approached to lead the project, I made a brief, which I presented it to the greater team for discussion.

My main goal during the initial conversations

  • Define project goals

  • Define how we might measure success

 
 
 

Define the Art

Discovery and Problem Framing.

 

1:1 Interviews & Generative Research

I spent the next two weeks taking 1:1 meetings with our core stakeholder group to understand the problem space.

Meanwhile, the VP of advisor field was leading a team in generative research to understand our most successful financial advisors.

 
 
 

Framing the Challenge

Throughout my interviews I noticed many differences in how our team saw the challenge. We needed to unify as a group and agree on 3 big pieces of the puzzle.

  • Which clients are we building this experience for?

  • Which advisors are we building this experience for?

  • How does the asset allocation tool fit into this puzzle?

I led 2 virtual workshops to discuss possible personas, scenarios, and the current state.

 
 
 

Deliverable #1: Current State, Blockers, Key Recommendations

I synthesized the information from our workshops and designed deliverables for this part of the challenge:

  • Mission statement

  • Current state service blueprint with user personas

  • Current state actions

  • Opportunities and blockers

  • Next steps

Arriving at this step was difficult because executives weren’t on the same page about the challenge. Each was vouching for their own product. For example, one investment executive thought the challenge meant we should spend time thinking about how investments might help. Meanwhile, insurance executives thought we shouldn’t bother because the company makes 90% of revenue from insurance products.

 
 

Define the Science

Establish and review the Academic and Scientific Perspective.

Reviewing the Science

Once we understood the current state, I dove into the findings from the Academic and Scientific Perspective, the work my colleagues completed to:

  1. Audit the current state of the behavioral and academic body of knowledge for users of the asset allocation tool

  2. Define statistical models and visual outputs necessary to facilitate end-user success and evoke positive, lasting behaviors that anchor to the digital platform.

  3. Create an output: documentation encapsulating the above results; diagrams and reports that summarize the themes and models necessary to include in potential concepts for future-state Financial Planning Strategy.

 
 

Design, Test, and Iterate

Create and deliver the Future-State Vision.

 

Co-Creation & Iteration

The portion of this project included:

  • Co-creation Workshop 1

  • Co-creation Workshop 2

  • Iteration & Core Team Check-in

 
 

Financial Planning Vision

Finally, I created vision presentation for leadership to use when talking about the future state, which included:

  • Future State Journey Map

  • Storyboard

  • Personas

 
 

After-Action Review

This project was big challenge for me. While we achieved everything we needed to, there were many curveballs within this challenge. I learned a lot about executive stakeholder management. Executives have big, strong opinions that come with such large responsibility. I’m proud of my ability to stay grounded and move the team along when we were stuck. In the future, I would like to make more confident choices for the group.