edward EG
Financial Services

Small Business Lending

How might we digitize data collection to expedite the underwriting process to relieve Small Business Lending during a global pandemic?

Timeline 1-week
My role UX Lead
Deliverables Interactive design, wireframes, prototypes

Overview

As a top-10 Small Business Administration lender, KeyBank helped thousands of businesses quickly gain funds through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a federally provided, forgivable loan that covers certain business costs. The impacts of COVID-19 led to a $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill signed into law in March 2020 and set aside $349 billion for a new small-business loan program.
These funds helped cover certain business costs related to payroll expenses, the continuation of group health care benefits, lease payments, mortgage interest payments, utility payments, and interest on other pre-existing debt obligations.

Problem

Outcome

Limited loan funds across financial institutions The limited funds created a critical sense of urgency to set up our application process to start queuing loan applications to secure funds.
Leveraged an existing framework Evaluated current systems in place and expanded capabilities to support new application requirements.
Track and review applications Loans are not guaranteed and are on a first-come, first-served basis, so it's important to be able to quickly funnel eligible clients.
Loan progress tracker A loan progress tracker with a series of emails and a dynamic page was introduced to create transparency for clients and reduce the increase in call volume.

Landing page for small business clients
Landing page for small business clients

Goals

Our initial focus was to quickly define some requirements to work as agile as possible with our clients in mind.
We prioritized our work in two quadrants, with my focus primarily on the experience trigger and actions needed by underwriters, and eligible clients.

The trigger As a banker, I need to be able to initiate an invitation through our Small Business Originations platform so that I can service our prospect and existing clients.
This initiation is critical in leveraging our client relationship manager to review and track applications.
Required actions As an eligible small business client, I need to be able to add information regarding my business so that I can understand my eligibility for this relief opportunity.
This exchange of information is critical to ensure all required information is captured in a timely manner.
The loan For businesses and non-profits with 500 or fewer employees, eligibility for loans may result in an opportunity for complete loan forgiveness.
Any amount not forgiven is converted to a term loan.
The variable reward The loan amount is less than $10,000,000 or 2.5x the total average monthly payroll costs incurred one year before origination.
Monthly payments differ between 6 and 12-months.

User Flow

Constraints

While the 1-week turnaround proved to be the greatest constraint, some of the challenges along the way include:

Critical

Evolving requirements

The details of the loan program continued to evolve through design and development requirements, creating confusion and a need to pivot constantly.
Risk

Learning in production

There was no opportunity to test and validate; we had to learn from customer calls, live production data, and an optional feedback survey on our digital experience.

Ideation

By collaborating with business and developer associates, we were able to envision our initial communications for invitations to apply for the paycheck protection program.

Invitation email

Design sketch for biggest opportunity.

Loan application tracker

A series of automated emails to communicate status updates to prospect loan borrowers.

Features

Our biggest feature with this release was retrofitting an existing enrollment experience for commercial clients and modifying the application to be specific to the Paycheck Protection Program.

Employee admin portal

We implemented a Client Relationship Manager (CRM) to invite clients to apply for the loan.

Account Summary

We integrated authenticated client-facing access to the loan application.

Email communications

We supported client communications with updates on the status of their loan application.

Sign on

Requires email validation for invite-only loan applications.

Loan offering selection

Cards are modular and display eligible offers to new and existing customers.

Loan detail

Business expenses can determine eligibility for loan relief.

Business information

Add information for up to 5 business owners.

Loan offering selection

Cards are modular and display eligible offers to new and existing customers.

Loan detail

Business expenses can determine eligibility for loan relief.

Business information

Add information for up to 5 business owners.

Identity verification

For security purposes, the application requires authorization for a loan application.

Document upload

Drag and drop or use native operating system upload feature.

Business information

Add information for up to 5 business owners.

Document upload

Drag and drop or use native operating system upload feature.

Loan confirmation

First of several automated communications regarding loan application status.

Impact

Over 40,000 loans processed.

Ranked #7

in nation

91%

click-through rate

28,000+

clients applied

$8 billion

in funding

Takeaways

This experience was truly rewarding in being able to keep work moving around the clock and handing off to offshort to continue at the end of a day, to then catch up on changes made overnight.
Lessons learned
  • Establish clear communication channels especially in short-term engagements. Be intentional on what is chat vs email.
  • Prioritize pace over perfection, remain nimble and iterative. Prioritize functionality then visuals.
  • Be an advocate for users when presented with technology constraints.
Some potential next steps
  • Deep analysis on 9% drop-off rate to understand if there are underlying opportunities.
  • Accessibility testing to ensure microinteractions are compliant, especially patterns like document upload.
  • Service blueprint for underwriting process to understand more on what is involved to streamline loan applications.

More work

View all work