top of page
A Seamless Underwriting Experience for Mid-Size Mortgage Underwriting Firm
Role: Lead Product Designer
Description: Paradigm Quest Inc. is a leading, innovative Business Process Outsourcing company in the Canadian mortgage industry. Since inception Paradigm has helped thousands of Canadian families realize their dream of home ownership.
Who I worked with?
I worked with an experienced product team on this project including Sr. Director Product & Design, Senior Product Manager, Business System Analyst, Developers, Myself and another Product Designer along with the stakeholders.
How long did it take?
I took us almost 3 months to complete the current scope of this project but the overall time period of completion was one year due to a large scale product and it’s complex architecture.
About Challange
The challange was to simplify the mortgage decision experience for the underwriters by giving them a smooth digital experience through portal where they could spend their maximum time on the multiple mortgage applications and allow people to get their home loans. As well as, To introduce a smart way system for the underwriters where system will tell them about what to do next in the process.
The Problem
All the underwriting process was manual and repetitive which caused the underwriters to work on just few applications in a day. Plus, There was no expert system on the backend who identified which application was authentic and which was not. Underwriters needed to prioritise all the applications before starting their process which took their a lot of time. There was no file management system in their portal so that they could keep all the relevant application files into their relevant folders.
Approach
After discovering and understanding the problem, It was very important for us to identify major key pain points of the underwriters so that we could improve their experience. We scheduled multiple calls with the underwriters and asked them to walk us through their exisiting process of underwriting we get to know about their paint points.
Understanding their underwriting process
We scheduled a call with underwriter and asked him to walk us through the complete process of an application. During the application walkthrough, We asked couple of questions to get more knowledge about their domain. After the call, We mapped all the screens on the MIRO board and started making the journey of an application process and found a lot of missing things in their current portal.
Identified their pain points
After understanding the process of underwriters, We talked to multiple underwriters and started mapping their pain points which were following:
-
All the process is manual.
-
Document packages are hard to work with.
-
Product allocation has to be changed most of the time.
Conducted Interviews and checked product usability through UX metrices
To know more about how Underwriters work on the applications, We conducted 5-6 interviews of underwriters and gave them tasks so that we could identify in which scenarios they are facing problems Plus, We gathered some important data through UX metrices by implementing new methods of usability testing such as SUS, SEQ and UMUX_Lite.
Test Plan
Product Usability Score
Our Documentation on UX Metrices
After having the session with multiple underwriters, We recorded their responses along with the task times and started working to measure the product’s usability through a specific method. The product usability was a bit low as per the scale but there were some difficult points which underwriters mentioned with us through the session.Most of their general scores were not good because they found some difficulities to perform the task. We recorded their responses which you could find below:
Usability Audit with SUS, SEO and NASA TLX Methods
Underwriters Responses
Key Findings
01
Most of the underwriters were aware of applications process.
04
They spend their most of the time to prioritise the applications in the manual queue management system.
02
Underwriters did not have an authentic communication channel to talk with the broker and managememt people.
05
They find difficulities to verify the applicant’s complete information because system doesn’t tell them if the information is correct or not.
03
Some of the task were very difficult for the underwriters to work on a deal e.g. To verify if the application is authentic or not.
06
The current system is too complex to handle because there were alot of other things existed in the portal which never used in the process.
Internal Team Research
After conducting the interviews and insights from underwriters, We started mapping out all the things onto our research board with the collaboration of stakeholders along with our team members and we mapped even a single question onto our board so that all the members of this project should have understanding.
MIRO Research Board
Overview of our research outcomes and team collaboration workshops
Persona
User Flow
Feature Mapping
Existing Journey
Gap Analysis
Task Flows
Journey Map
Underwriters Experience Reimagined
After discovering, understanding and identification phase, We started reimaging the new system for the underwriters and here is what our stakeholders shared with us which had in their minds.
What was underwriters vision
What we documented from their vision
After having a long discussion with the stakeholders we started working on the next gen portal with the collaboration of overall team and we started mapping out the high level architecture on our reasearch board.
Next Gen Journeys
High Level Workflow
High Level Vision
Proposed Solution
We defined a complete scope of the next gen portal with the improved product scale along with it’s scenarios, flows, journeys, and high level architecture. We introducted a smart decision engine for the underwriters which minimized the pain points of all the underwriters. The idea behind this Decision Engine was like this:
“DE will automatically verify the information of the applicant and will tell the underwriter about what are your next steps to work on this deal. Plus, DE will automaticallt prioritise all the applications for an underwriter. ”
Blockframes , Wireframes and High Fidelity Visuals
Blockframe
Wireframes
Hig-Fid Design
Success Metrics
The results and outcomes were really impressive because we minimized the effort of underwriters which they wanted from us to implement into the portal. We came up with the idea of smart suggestion system which will suggest the underwriters about what to do in the next stage and which information is correct and which is not.
We shared the prototype and a new portal vision with our real sponsored users (underwriters). They really liked the new seamless process of underwriting and they told us how they are so much happy with the new system because now they don’t needed to prioritise all the applications manually and to keep all the data into the excel files.
bottom of page