Automated Reviews
FinTech SaaS · nCino
FinTech SaaS · nCino
Automated Reviews
Redesigning the annual client review workflow for financial institutions, reducing manual effort and enabling continuous relationship monitoring at scale.
Impact
30,000+
Financial professionals supported across the nCino platform
50+
User interviews and usability tests conducted to validate direction
25%
Increase in feature adoption through workflow improvements
Role
Lead Designer
Team
Designer, UX Researcher, PM, Customer Success
Company
nCino
Type
Feature Design
Business Context
nCino's platform serves financial institutions managing complex client portfolios. Annual and quarterly relationship reviews, a core compliance and profitability activity, were being handled partly inside nCino and partly through external tools, creating fragmented workflows and lost time for relationship managers.
The business case was clear: automate the review process to accelerate completion, reduce reliance on external software, and enable continuous monitoring that drives more profitable client relationships.
The Problem
Relationship managers were spending significant time on reviews that should have been streamlined. The core tension: automating recommendations fast enough to save time while maintaining the trust of users who were deeply skeptical of anything "automated" in a compliance-adjacent workflow.
This wasn't just a UX problem. It was a change management challenge embedded in a product design brief.
Research
I led a multi-phase research effort across internal stakeholders and external customers, combining interviews with formative usability testing on clickable prototypes.
Internal Research
Five 1-hour sessions with former nCino Relationship Managers using contextual inquiry to map current review workflows and identify pain points.
Customer Research
Four remote interviews with financial institutions across Enterprise, Regional, and Community segments, observing real workflows and testing prototypes.
Synthesis
Tagged and categorized 50+ insights in Dovetail with criticality ratings. Key finding: information needs were similar across institutions, but review processes varied significantly, requiring flexible, customizable workflows.
Interview synthesis and research theme analysis from Dovetail
Strategic Reframe
Early briefs framed this as "automate the review." Research reframed it as "earn trust for automation." Skeptical users needed to understand why a recommendation was made before they'd act on it, which shifted the design from a workflow tool to a transparency and explanation system.
This reframe changed the information architecture, the hierarchy of what data was surfaced, and how the system communicated confidence levels to reviewers.
Wireframe iterations exploring review states, progressing to high-fidelity design
Artifacts
- —Information grouping charts mapping content hierarchy across user segments
- —Individual FI user journey maps highlighting workflow variation across institution types
- —Comprehensive feature journey integrating UI, nCino logic, integrations, and external data
- —Formative usability test results with clickable prototypes across two rounds
Persona journey maps and end-to-end system flow across UI, services, and external data
Outcomes & Impact
Research findings were compiled into a prioritized roadmap for the product team. I presented findings to Customer Success and Sales leadership, directly supporting the sales cycle and feature education for prospects.
The reframed approach to trust and transparency became a foundational design principle applied across subsequent nCino automation features.
Prioritized next steps from research synthesis
Final Design
The shipped relationship monitoring dashboard, surfacing review details, risk insights, spreads, compliance monitoring, and automated recommendations in a single, trust-building view.
