This project was kickstarted in late 2018, but I participated in this project in Q3 of 2019 due to a designer’s departure. At that time, I was responsible for the deliverable UI design to ensure a smooth transition within the product team. Since then, I have become one of the design leads to work on both UX and UI in terms of maintenances, refinements, and enhancements with new features.

With its timeline of development, FlexInvest has become a scaleable product to different markets and a foundational reference for the wealth products built in HSBC apps.

HSBC FlexInvest
UI (100%) / UX (30%) Design
2019 - 2022

FlexInvest is a mobile application built in HSBC Hong Kong app for fund investments. With offering 15 HSBC licensed funds, it offers a platform for millennials to start investing with low fees and charges.

The product timeline indicates its development. FlexInvest was the first wealth investment product built into the HSBC mobile application in 2019. While it was scaled to different markets, FlexInvest has been having continuous releases for experience enhancement.

Problem statement

We do not have a diversification in terms of the investment platforms.

↓

Product objective

We want to encourage millennials to start investing through a platform that offers investment products with relatively lower costs and potential risks.

MVP Stage

By conducting in-depth market research and competitor analysis, the research process helped us define what are the basic functionalities that help customers to navigate the fund trading process through the seamless user experience.

Competitor Analysis

We used competitive analysis to help us define the strengths and weaknesses of current and potential competitors such as other banks and online payment platforms about fund trading. In the meantime, this method has offered us insights and strategies to identify our opportunities and threats.
Feature and IA Comparison in Competitors

We also compared the experience and information architecture (IA) between competitors. In order to evaluate and identify usability problems in our product, it helped us detect some problematic areas that can possibly make improvements in our future product.
Proposition Research

There was a third-party agency to help us and the business team conduct research for FlexInvest’s product proposition to see if the product strategies are valid or not.

But… after the MVP release

How can we improve it? What can we do?

Day 2 Release

After the MVP release, we decided to focus on the improvement for millennial customers in terms of how do millennials feel about the end-to-end experience from the HSBC app to FlexInvesnt, and how millennials can receive benefits from using FlexInvest.

Customer Journey Mapping

This mapping process helped us identify the good and bad experiences for customers using FlexInvest in the HSBC app. With a visual story of customers' interactions in the app. This process assists us to step into customers' shoes and see things from the customer's perspective. We have discovered 57 painpoints!

UAT - Landscape Review

We had a third-party agency helping us recruit targeted customers, and run the testing session. In order to have a validation of FlexInvest’s proposition and experience, we interviewed 8 people for their thoughts about this product and its experience. It came back with a great result and constructive feedback.

Focus group interview

We arranged a 1-hr focus group meeting internally with 9 student interns and trainees in the digital team to help us provide first-hand insights from real millennials. and feedback. In the discussion, we focused on some of the perspectives listed below:

What is their saving behavior?
What is their investment behavior? Why do they invest? Why do they not invest?
What / How much do they think about Fund/ Unit Trust
How much do they know about eVest and other investment platforms
What will try if there is enough money to invest

Key Findings

Saving Behavior

The focus group found that most of the interviewees only do saving via controlling their spending. They will start considering more financial management aspects when income gets more.

Their actual saving is lower than 25% of their income.
Most of them know the interest rate of saving and time-deposit which is quite low.
They normally either do not have much left or simply give the left-overs to the parents. It blocks them from trying investment.

Lack of Knowledge

The research found most of the millennials have no knowledge about Fund/Unit Trust. They stopped trying to do fund investments when they see difficult fund terminologies.

They heard that funds highly rely on fund managers’ experience.
They have a perception that fund investment would require a high management fee
They think FlexInvest only provides very limited choices of funds.
Millennials cannot simply learn investment from reading, they must start doing to learn more.

Sense of insecurity

Millennials would consider the investment as relatively a high-risk option compared to saving plans with interest rates and time-deposit. They have hesitation to try investment products with uncertain risks, they think it will encourage them with additional benefits.

Most of the interviewees in the focus group will surely try it for the reward cash.
The lack of investable money stops them from further trying or experiencing on investment.
Scared of loss. But this is more due to the stereotype of investment=stock.

Ideation

After we gathered all the feedback, to come up with solutions, we used the MoSCoW method (displayed below) to review and prioritize the current product features and potential features, and we saw an opportunity to improve the MVP with new elements. Therefore, we decided to focus on how to support millennials to invest.

1. Buy Funds with Credit Card Points

Based on the research results, it indicates people are also looking for incentives to sweeten the offer.

“Will there be any rewards or rebates? When I first apply for a credit card, there will be a new joiner welcome gift. This will encourage me to step in”

In this case, this concept attempts to encourage customers to do a low-risk fund investment with their credit card reward points.

2. Landing Screen with Articles

The research also mentioned that

testers had concerns about terminologies used in the application that were limiting the understanding and familiarity of the product.

One of the reports suggested that consider having a glossary list or a help icon above investment jargon in the application for the investors.

To have an interim solution, we decided to have a landing page with investment-related articles to support and educate customers about how to do investment through FlexInvest, and what are the major differences in terms of buying options, as well as the fees and charges, etc.

3. Adding settlement cycles

To enhance the transparency of the fund trading process, we added a settlement cycle feature into the trading journeys in order to create more visibility and fulfill expectations for our customers.

What can we do more in the 3rd release?

3rd Release

Continuing with the enhancement of FlexInvest, we kept digging into the research results for further improvements with possible approaches. In 2021, FlexInvest has been received funding to continue building a better investment platform for millennials.

4. Fund Specific Educational Articles

In order to provide a clear fund detail page that is easy to follow and digestible, especially for millennials who may lack investment knowledge. Adding an additional section with a few key highlights of the fund allows customers to view more details in the 2nd level such that customers will have a brief concept of the fund. They can also understand the fund more by accessing the fund articles in the 2nd level.

Key screens of the Simple Starter Journey

Workflow for Simple Starter Journey in FlexInvest 3rd Release

5. Simple Starter Journey

Simple Starter Journey is a massive new feature update in FlexInvest. This feature allows customers will be provided a personalized multi-asset fund based on their risk level. Customers can simply choose it without having difficulties in deciding how to allocate their funds.

Meanwhile, for customers with higher risk level tolerance, the journey can also help customers build a simple portfolio by providing a recommended asset allocation. Customers can thus make references and have a hassle-free investment experience.

*For more information, there is a design page for this project in particular.

How to make FlexInvest impactful?

What is next?

FlexInvest becomes a scalable product to different markets

EZInvest (FlexInvest in Malaysia)

FlexInvest expanded to Malaysia as EZInvest. In a total duration of 8 months, EZInvest was officially released in 2021 Q4 in Malaysia.

FlexInvest UK

FlexInvest was being leveraged to the HSBC UK. It was handled by the designers in the UK design team.

Extention to Unit Trust Mobile

FlexInvest became a reference to leverage its design journeys to Unit Trust Mobile, which severs different markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, UAE.

Next step…

There are ongoing researches, meetings, and workshops working closely with cross-functional teams in order to come up with items that we would want to push for a better customer experience.

Takeaways

Challenges

Endless discussion with other design teams
Since FlexInvest was the first investment mobile application launched in the HSBC app, we had involved in lots of meetings for the discussion of how we can create an alignment in terms of the user experience across other product journeys in HSBC. Meanwhile, a list of new UI components used in FlexInvest was another big challenge in the design sign-off process.
Imagination VS Reality
We attempted to build a product that is as simple as possible for millennials. However, with the feedback from various stakeholders such as the business and legal team, we have to display detailed information for regularity and compliance purposes.
Expectations VS Research results
We had lots of scenarios when our directions of the project and design may not fit our expectations in the validation process. Due to the resource limitations, we need to prioritize items and come up with interim solutions to address problems.
UI Reskin
As a UI lead for this project, we have moved to various versions of UI toolkits. How to bring FlexInvest from legacy component usage to the latest HSBC UI standard has been one of the major concerns in product development.

Outcomes

Award-winning product
FlexInvest receives awards in the financial industry as follows:
• Bloomberg Business HK - Financial Institution Awards 2020 (Wealth Management Platform)
• Asia Banking & Finance Retail Banking Awards 2020 (Wealth Management Platform of the Year, HK)
• FinancialAsia Awards (Best Bank HK - FlexInvest been covered)
1st of wealth investment app integrated into HSBC app
Since FlexInvest was the first investment mobile application launched in the HSBC app, it helps the business to have more insights into how we can do with having more wealth investment products in the HSBC app to create a seamless investment experience.
Becoming a foundational reference
Being the 1st wealth product launched in the HSBC app, FlexInvest has been a foundation to help set up a reference for other products such as Stocks, Unit Trusts, Bonds, and Forex. FlexInvest also plays an essential role in leveraging its journeys to Unit Trust mobile products (Unit Trust Mobile) to different markets.
Expanding to different markets
FlexInvest also caused a massive impact by expanding to other markets such as Malaysia and UK.

Looking forward for more updates! Thanks for reading!! =D