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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.

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?

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

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

Why Develop a Wealth Management App?

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.

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.

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.

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. See ‘Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)’ above for more info.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Conclusion

When at the cola face, trail blazing the rise of financial super app being a switch on UX designer with the following traits is key;

• Define a financial super app as an ecosystem of features and services, we’ve covered the importance especially solving clients problems. 
• The must-have features include personalisation, multi-factor authentication, and portfolio aggregation all wrapped up in game-changing data visualisation UX best practices and ensuring consistency.
• All this is not possible without a design system that rocks, knowing when not to fix what ain’t broke and understanding that designers need to start delivering from day one.

— russellwebb.co.uk – UX Designer

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This is but part of a selec­tion of design articles Spindlelegs gen­er­ated for the creative community out there.

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