Case study
AXA Connect: Transforming Broker Efficiency
with an innovative Portfolio Management Dashboard
Timeframe:
The design process, which included user research, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing and development handoff, was completed over a period of 8 weeks (approximately 2 months). The entire project, from initial discovery to final launch, spanned approximately 7 months. In the post-launch phase, we used tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar and A/B testing to conduct quantitative user research.
My role:
As the Senior UX/UI Designer, I was responsible for shaping the entire user experience, from initial concept to final implementation, ensuring that every aspect of the portal was aligned with AXA IM’s goals and the brokers’ needs.
Tools:
Figma, Sketch, Miro, Card Sorting, UserTesting.com, Google Analytics, Heatmaps.
Techniques:
Competitive analysis, User research interviews, Usability testing, Card sorting, Tree testing, Stakeholder workshops, A/B testing, Google Analytics, Hotjar.
Executive Summary:
This project was a key initiative in AXA IM’s broader digital transformation strategy, aimed at leveraging technology to enhance broker efficiency and client engagement. The AXA Connect broker portal dashboard was specifically designed to provide AXA brokers with an intuitive and powerful tool for managing client portfolios and streamlining client interactions within AXA IM.
Increasing
Broker efficency
Boosting
Broker satisfation
Optimising
Client engagement
Design Process
⬇️Jump directly to these sections:
1. Discover phase: Understanding the business and the context
The design process began with extensive research involving key stakeholders from various departments, including Sales, Risk, Compliance, Marketing, Content Writers, Operations, and IT to identify pain points and understand the core problems that needed to be addressed in the AXA IM Portfolio Management.
The context
AXA wanted to provide its network of brokers with a tool to streamline their workflows, improve access to essential finance information, and centralise tasks related to client management, policy updates, and product offerings. Without a dedicated dashboard, brokers had to manually navigate through different systems, emails, and documents, which slowed down their ability to serve clients effectively and limited their ability to access key insights or updates in real-time.
The problem
Brokers were struggling to manage investment-related information and tasks efficiently without a centralised platform. They relied on manual processes, scattered resources, and multiple communication channels, which made it difficult to stay organised and access critical data. This led to inefficiencies, slower response times, and a lack of satisfaction for both brokers and their clients.
The objective
The goal was to design and implement the AXA Connect Broker Portal Dashboard as a central platform to enhance broker productivity, streamline operations, and improve user experience. This design solution aimed to solve the disorganisation and inefficiency that brokers were facing by giving them a single, integrated solution tailored to their needs.
Initial User Research
Participants: 10 brokers from diverse backgrounds (experienced, new, and across several regions).
Interviewed 10 brokers and financial advisors to uncover pain points in managing client portfolios, with special attention to how they accessed financial data, tracked performance, and communicated with clients.
Techniques:
- User Interviews: Focused on understanding brokers' daily workflows, pain points in managing portfolios, and preferred tools for client communication.
- Domain Expert Interviews: Engaged risk managers and compliance officers to ensure that the system adhered to necessary financial regulations and security protocols.
User Reseach Questions (brokers and financial advisors)
Daily workflow
Pain points
Tool preferences
Information Access
Client Communication
Daily workflow
- Can you walk me through a typical day managing client portfolios?
- What are the primary tools or systems you use for managing your client information?
- How do you typically track and update client policies or claims?
Pain points
- What are the most time-consuming tasks in your daily routine?
- Are there any specific challenges you face when managing client portfolios?
- How do you handle client inquiries, and what makes this process difficult, if at all?
Tool preferences
- Are there any tools or platforms you currently use that you find particularly helpful? Why?
- What functionalities or features would make your job easier in terms of managing policies, claims, or client communication?
- If you could change one thing about the current tools you use, what would it be?
Information Access
- How easy is it for you to find the information you need about client policies, claims, or products?
- Is there anything you wish was easier to access or update within your existing tools?
Client Communication
- How do you typically communicate with your clients, and what tools or channels do you use?
- What difficulties, if any, do you encounter when managing client interactions or sharing information with them?
Key insights:
- Brokers were spending excessive time finding key information about portfolios due to scattered data sources. Many important tasks, such as tracking client policies, updating claims, and managing client portfolios, involve navigating multiple systems, which slows down their workflow.
- Client communication lacked personalisation, brokers wanted more real-time insight into client engagement. A real-time view of portfolio performance and policy updates is essential for timely decision-making and client communication. The lack of real-time data limits their ability to make quick, data-informed recommendations to clients.
- Real-time performance insights for more proactive client engagement. There is a need for tools that allow them to easily track portfolio performance over time, including Year-to-Date (YTD) performance and historical performance trends. Interactive visualizations or graphs for tracking performance changes could help them better monitor and analyse portfolios.
- Integrated communication tools: For managing modern portfolios, brokers find their existing tools outdated and lacking in functionality. In today's financial environment, they need integrated analytics, automated reporting, and advanced security features.
2. Define phase
Wireframes
In the Define Phase, based on the requirements gathered, I worked with the product owner, business analysts and Compliance teams to develope user stories to address the specific needs of brokers. These user stories help translate user needs and research insights into clear, actionable design solutions. They ensure that the product is centered around solving real problems for AXA IM users.
1. Dashboard Welcome Page:
▪️ User Story: As a broker, I need a comprehensive welcome page that provides an overview of my clients’ portfolio composition, access to important documents, a graph showing Year-to-Date (YTD) performance, quick contact with AXA IM, and visibility of new notifications.
▪️ Design Challenge: Brokers required a centralised starting point that combines multiple essential functions into a single, easily navigable interface. The challenge was to present diverse and complex information (portfolio composition, performance metrics, documents, and notifications) in a way that is both accessible and actionable, without overwhelming the user.
▪️ Design Solution: deisgned a clean, modular welcome page layout that prioritises ease of access and usability. The page features distinct sections for portfolio composition , YTD performance graphs, document access, and notifications. A contact widget for AXA IM was integrated prominently to ensure brokers can reach out without navigating away from the dashboard. This design not only centralises key information but also enhances the broker’s ability to manage client portfolios efficiently, leading to improved decision-making and quicker response times to client needs.
2. Portfolio Overview:
▪️ User Story: As a broker, I need to consult general information about my clients’ portfolios.
▪️ Requirement: Access all portfolios for which the broker has a role of owner, co-owner, or legal representative. View key metrics such as the value of the portfolio, asset allocation, and detailed insights into cash and securities accounts.
▪️ Design Challenge: Brokers needed a way to quickly and efficiently access critical financial data across multiple client portfolios. The complexity of this data required a solution that balanced detailed information with usability.
▪️ Design Solution: Implemented a streamlined tile-based layout, allowing brokers to quickly access critical information like Assets Under Management (AUM), portfolio performance, and asset allocation. This solution not only streamlined access to critical information but also enhanced the brokers’ ability to respond swiftly to client inquiries, improving overall client satisfaction.
3. Portfolio Composition:
▪️ User Story: As a broker, I need detailed breakdowns of my clients’ portfolios.
▪️ Requirement: View detailed breakdowns of equities, geographical allocation, bond allocation per asset class, and alternative fund allocations.
▪️ Design Challenge: Brokers needed a clear, intuitive way to differentiate between various client portfolios and understand the detailed composition of each.
▪️ Design Solution: Used color-coding and unique portfolio identifiers to visually differentiate portfolios. Clear visual hierarchies and interactive graphs were incorporated to provide a comprehensive view of each portfolio’s composition, including equities, bond allocations, and alternative investments. This approach ensured brokers could easily analyse and compare different portfolios.
4. Portfolio Performance:
▪️ User Story: As a broker, I need to view the performance of my clients’ portfolios.
▪️ Requirement: Access performance data, including year-to-date performance, performance since portfolio creation, and overall performance on specific date.
▪️ Design Challenge: Brokers required tools to not only view but also interact with portfolio performance data in a way that would enhance their decision-making and client communication.
▪️ Design Solution: Performance tracking was a key feature integrated into the portfolio performance tab, where brokers can view performance trends over time through interactive line graphs. The wireframe included date selection tools to allow brokers to customise the performance data view.
5. Transaction History:
▪️ User Story: As a broker, I need to see the transactions within my clients’ portfolios since their creation.
▪️ Functional Requirement: View transactions categorized by date, type, and amount, allowing for detailed tracking and analysis.
▪️ Design Challenge: Balancing the need for robust data security and compliance with the requirement for a user-friendly interface was crucial. Brokers needed to view sensitive transaction data without compromising security.
▪️ Design Solution: Designed sortable and filterable tables for easy transaction tracking, with secure file transfer protocols and minimal temporary data storage to meet compliance requirements.
Information Architecture (IA) and Wireframing
During the card sorting phase, brokers were asked to categorise the platform’s content in a way that felt intuitive to them. This revealed clear patterns, such as a strong association between “Portfolio Management” and “Performance Tracking.” Building on this, tree testing with Treejack evaluated the proposed information architecture. While features like “Transaction History” were easy for brokers to locate, the testing highlighted that users expected to first select a portfolio before accessing detailed actions like “Performance Tracking” and “Document Management,” which were previously only available in the sidebar.
3. Develop phase
Prototypes
The prototyping phase was critical in validating design solutions before full-scale development. I created interactive prototypes to be tested with users to gather feedback and refine the interface. This iterative approach ensured that the final product was both user-friendly and aligned with the strategic goals of AXA IM.
Key Prototype Features:
- Interactive Dashboards: Allowed brokers to explore different data views and customise their dashboard experience.
- User Testing: Involved brokers in the testing process to ensure that the interface met their needs and expectations.
- Stakeholder Reviews: Regular feedback sessions with stakeholders ensured that the design aligned with broader business objectives.
Interactive prototype:
Click the ‘Expand View’ icon in the top right corner to enlarge the interactive prototype in Figma
Key Improvements:
- Broker Efficiency: Brokers are now able to access and analyse client portfolios more quickly and accurately, leading to a significant boost in efficiency.
- Broker Satisfaction: There has been a noticeable improvement in broker satisfaction, particularly in areas such as portfolio performance tracking and transaction history visibility.
- Client Engagement: Enhanced communication tools and better insights have empowered brokers to deliver more personalised client experiences, resulting in stronger client engagement.
Additional Metrics:
- Client Retention: Early indicators suggest a positive impact on client retention rates, as brokers are now able to provide more timely and informed advice.
- Portfolio Growth: Brokers have reported that the improved tools have helped them identify new opportunities for portfolio growth.
6. Future Enhancements and Next Steps:
Following the launch of the AXA Connect portal, quantitative user research techniques were implemented to gather in-depth, data-driven insights into broker interactions and engagement with the platform. This phase was critical in refining the platform, ensuring it continued to meet brokers’ evolving needs, and identifying areas for further enhancement.
- Google Analytics: Enabled tracking of user behavior patterns, such as frequency of visits, session duration, and specific feature engagement. By analysing these metrics, we identified high-value areas within the portal, such as the Portfolio Overview and Performance Tracking sections, which saw the most consistent broker engagement. Additionally, heatmaps were leveraged to identify which sections brokers interacted with most, providing valuable insights into areas of high or low usability.
- Hotjar: A heatmap and session recording are generated by Hotjar, enabling the team to identify friction points and confusion in real time. Brokers frequently had difficulties navigating from the Dashboard Welcome Page to Transaction History, leading to further usability refinements.
- A/B Testing: Conducted iterative A/B tests to refine portfolio performance graphs and navigation elements within the dashboard. To determine which version supported quick access to key portfolio metrics, A/B tests were conducted comparing the original designs with alternative layouts. Results showed a 15% improvement in click-through rates to key portfolio metrics.
Key Insights:
- Heatmaps and session data revealed that features such as Document Management and the Power Circle e-learning platform were rarely accessed from the main dashboard. To optimise the experience, the sections were moved to the navigation bar for better experience, decluttering the primary interface and ensuring faster access to frequently used functions.
- Improved Engagement Metrics: Through A/B testing, the interface was refined to be 20% faster to navigate for brokers, leading to higher satisfaction scores.
- Streamlined Feature Set: As a result of data indicating minimal engagement, certain features were eliminated altogether, allowing brokers to focus on what they find most useful.
- Feature Validation for Future Development: Brokers consistently engaged with performance data and trends, which validated the need for upcoming features such as Predictive Analytics.
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