Redesigning a complex fintech onboarding journey to reduce friction, boost conversions, and embed design thinking into a rapidly scaling company that had never had it before.
Applying for a cash advance when your bank has already said no is a stressful, high-stakes moment. You need the money. You're not sure if you'll qualify. And then you hit a form that feels like it was built for a spreadsheet, not a person.
That was the reality for SMEs applying through Liberis Finance. A journey engineered for delivery, not designed for humans. Five different merchant flows with inconsistent experiences, a login process that tripped people up before they'd even started, and no clarity on what was being asked or why. Drop-off was high. Call-handling costs were climbing. Design thinking was entirely absent from a 120-person company scaling fast enough that nobody had stopped to notice.
There were two challenges running in parallel. Fix the journey. And build belief to invest in an internal design capability that hadn't existed before I arrived.
Outcomes
• 31% increase in end-to-end online completion (measured after implementation of designs post-engagement)
• White-label quote experience successfully deployed across partner merchant sites
• Merchant partners expanded from 5 to 8, supported by the improved onboarding experience
• Embedded user-centred design thinking across Product, Marketing, Fulfilment, Data, and Tech
• Secured ongoing design buy-in, directly contributing to the birth later of an in-house design function
• Provided the strategic and design foundation for future product and platform features
• 55% faster completion rates in user testing
What I did
• Served as the sole design expert within a 120-person company, leading the end-to-end redesign from research through to interactive prototyping
• Reviewed customer calls, audited all five merchant flows, and conducted market research to establish strategic direction
• Facilitated cross-functional workshops across Product, Marketing, Sales, IT, and Fulfilment
• Synthesised five separate merchant flows into a single unified master flow, white-labelled for use across all partner sites
• Defined ten design directions balancing user needs, compliance constraints, and technical feasibility
• Worked directly with the Head of Product to prioritise and road-map improvements
• Navigated significant compliance constraints around data collection and question rationalisation throughout
• Delivered a structured handover roadmap that enabled the team to continue implementation and validation after my engagement ended
Original Quote Journey
I started by listening. Reviewing six to seven recorded customer calls with call handlers, reading internal documentation, and auditing all five existing merchant flows to map where the friction lived.
The picture that emerged was specific. Many customers were dropping off at the very first step, unable to remember their merchant number, with no alternative way to log in. Those who got past login hit a question flow that gave them no context for what was being asked or why, leaving them uncertain whether to continue.
One customer call captured it perfectly:
"I was filling in the form online, but got stuck on one of the questions. I wasn't sure how to answer it correctly. I've already been rejected by my bank. I got your email, so I just wanted to know if I can get a cash advance — can you help me?"
This wasn't a person rejecting the process because it was too long. This was a person who wanted to complete it but didn't feel safe enough to continue. That distinction became the foundation for every design decision that followed.
The key insight: Users weren't abandoning because of the length of the journey. They were abandoning because they didn't understand why certain information was required or what would happen next.
Competitor research ran alongside the customer insight work revealing that Liberis had a genuine business differentiator that wasn't being used: the ability to offer cash advances to SMEs who had already been declined by their bank. That insight sharpened both the product positioning and the tone of the experience.
Listening to customer calls & taking notes with call handling team
Working through 5 varied complex merchant user flows into one master flow
Summary of synthesized research presented to Product, Marketing and IT teams
Communication of most critical usability issues / JTBD
With a clear picture of the problem, I facilitated a cross-functional workshop with Product, Marketing, Sales, IT, and Fulfilment, bringing the full breadth of the business into the room to surface gaps in the customer journey, generate solutions, and align on priorities, feasibility, and trade-offs.
Ideas were synthesised and ranked o user experience, operational constraints, and compliance.
Working directly with the Head of Product, we shaped the outputs into ten concrete design directions:
1. Streamlined Login
Replace the merchant number login with government-registered business number or email, removing the single biggest cause of early drop-off.
2. Adaptive Quote Flow
Two distinct paths based on customer intent. Browsers receive a high-level cash advance estimate with fewer questions, while customers urgently needing funding move through a fuller flow.
3. Simplified Information Architecture
Two persistent zones: a top navigation bar visible at all times, and an active central zone showing the current stage, giving users clarity and a sense of progress throughout.
• Top Menu Navigation Zone: Persistent top zone remains visible at all times— to guide users clearly through the process.
• Active Zone: Central screen area displaying the current stage of the application process, further helping users understand their progress.
4. Stage Reduction & Clarity
Reduced the journey from seven stages to five. Faster, less daunting, and aligned to what the technology could realistically support.
5. End-To-End Integration
Brought confirmation, approval, checking, and contract signing into a single seamless online process, including legally binding digital signatures.
6. Assistive Features
Data sync with partner sites and autofill to reduce manual errors. Errors that were directly causing fund rejections and lost conversions.
7. Conversational Tone
Softer, more approachable language throughout, because people applying for emergency business funding are stressed, and the experience should acknowledge that.
8. Quote flexibility
An ability to customise cash amounts and repayment lengths within the journey, addressing the single most common reason people called the support line.
9. Mobile Version
A fully responsive experience enabling customers to onboard directly from marketing emails, meeting people where they already were.
10. Progress Bar
Simple visible indication of how far through the journey a customer was, because people had no idea, and uncertainty was driving abandonment.
Trade-offs were made throughout, prioritising clarity and flexibility while working within technical limits and compliance constraints. Some enhancements were deliberately staged for future iterations rather than loaded into the first release.
With business-as-usual priorities in mind, I engineered how the journey could be represented as testable high-fidelity prototypes and orchestrated the user testing plan, running sessions both in-office and remotely.
The master flow unified all five merchant journeys into a single consistent experience. Clickable prototypes brought the key touchpoints to life for user validation.
Results were clear:
• 55% faster completion rates in testing
• Users consistently described the new flow as more logical, informative, and easier to complete
• End-to-end process validated including the new contract signing stages
• Testing surfaced an additional requirement, joint business owners needed a dedicated flow for adding individual credentials, scoped into the roadmap for a future release
User Workshop Plan
Setting up (user testing)
Milestones were defined around learning, risk reduction, and incremental delivery, not just shipping features:
Early: Quick wins on the highest drop-off points. Clearer messaging, better guidance, and the login fix that was causing abandonment before people had even started.
Mid: Shared patterns and micro-improvements across the full journey, building consistency and reducing the cognitive load of moving between stages.
Later: More advanced features; joint-owner logins, flexible quote adjustments, additional accessibility enhancements, once the foundational improvements had been proven and the team had confidence to go further.
This approach allowed the team to iterate safely after my engagement ended, delivering measurable impact at each stage rather than waiting for a single large release.
The engagement concluded at prototype and handover stage. The team had a structured roadmap, tested prototypes, and clear guidance to continue. Implementation proceeded after my engagement ended with remote validation, iterative improvements to the joint owner login flow and quote flexibility features, and a phased rollout of the white-label solution across additional merchant partner sites.
The 31% increase in end-to-end completion was measured and shared after that implementation. The designs delivered their outcome without me in the room, which I am proud of as it helped leave a team better equipped than you found them.
The most interesting constraint on this project wasn't technical, it was compliance. The rationalisation of the question set was harder than any design problem because every question touched data collection rules, legal obligations, and internal politics simultaneously. Navigating that taught me that in heavily regulated industries, the best design work happens when you treat compliance as a creative constraint rather than a blocker.
The second thing this project reinforced: embedding design thinking is as much a people challenge as a craft challenge. In a 120-person company where design had never had a seat at the table, the work wasn't just about improving the journey, it was about demonstrating, workshop by workshop and decision by decision, that a user-centred approach can help produce better commercial outcomes. By the end, that case had been made. The in-house design function that grew after from this engagement is the outcome I'm most proud of.
