Streamlining the loan application process for private customers

business_center

Unicredit Bank Austria, Vienna

Streamlining the loan application process for private customers

business_center

Unicredit Bank Austria, Vienna

Streamlining the loan application process for private customers

business_center

Unicredit Bank Austria, Vienna

Screenshot of a figma file showing one of the UX flow for consumer finance
Screenshot of a figma file showing one of the UX flow for consumer finance

Parts of the UX flow for customers who were granted pre-approved loans - one of the shortest flows as eligibility checks were not needed.

Role

Senior UX Designer

Year(s)

2022 - 2024

Duties

Requirements analysis

UX Design

Usability evaluations

Mentoring

Cooperation with diverse stakeholders

Design testing

Project scope

For this project, I was contracted by Mastercard to support their customer, Unicredit Bank Austria, with design consulting.

Bank Austria is an austrian bank that got acquired by Unicredit, in 2005. I joined Unicredit at a point where it was harmonising its digital banking services across European branches. I was hired to represent the Austrian branch in this effort and lead the UX work for Consumer Finance—particularly the loan application process for new and existing customers.

Parts of the customer-facing flow for loan application (MVP1). Due to confidentiality and the collaborative nature of the project with Bank Austria, the selection of screenshots shown is limited.

Setting up the loan application process

When I joined, my first goal was to adapt the Italian loan application flow for the Austrian market. This required in-depth mapping of user journeys, aligning with Austrian and Italian legal and banking experts, and clarifying strategic goals and priorities. Regulatory differences between the two countries had a direct impact on many UX aspects, such as eligibility errors, flow logic and even typography. After gathering the requirements, I designed the loan application prototype and conducted user testing.

Infographic about the demographics of user evaluations
Infographic about the demographics of user evaluations
Infographic about the demographics of user evaluations

Setup for quantitative and qualitative user evaluations.

Benchmarking & User Testing

To uncover usability gaps in the complex mobile loan application process, we conducted qualitative interviews (via an external agency) and quantitative testing with Useberry. We did A/B testing with different visuals (illustrations vs. photography) and slightly different flows. We measures task completion rate and time, gathered insights from heatmaps and collected feedback on overall impression, terminology comprehension, CTA visibility and perception, trust and support needs of the users. We supplemented our research with benchmarking against major Austrian competitors.

Findings were distilled and presented and a design iteration took place. We included explanations of certain terms, brought additional relevant information to the screens to build trust, improved visibility of certain CTAs, and performed additional design changes, that even if small, had been shown to impact user conversion.

After the design iteration, I collaborated closely with the Italian UX and development teams in an agile setup. I also helped organise the localisation efforts and contributed to the intensive QA testing through to MVP1 rollout.

Slides with insights from user evaluations.

Scaling up for MVP2

In the second phase of the project, I twas responsible for all core loan application flows:

  • loans for new-to-bank customers

  • pre-approved loans (PALO)

  • loans for existing customers (for both web and mobile app)

  • internal loan management flow for branch employees

This phase came with increased complexity, as it involved managing input from a wide range of stakeholders across Austria and Italy, including legal, product, business and insurance partners. I was responsible for reviewing and prioritising incoming change requests, translating them into clear design proposals, and ensuring consistency across all flows.

I also onboarded and mentored a junior UX/UI designer, explaining her the project context and defining a collaboration practice. This project went far beyond UX and UI design — it was about communication, finding bridging between different fields, i.e. design and legal and gaining consensus on complex workflows in a multicultural and remote-working setting.

“ Thanks to her expertise, we were able to significantly improve our user experience and the feedback from our customers was consistently positive.”

Danijela Dimitrijevich

Lending Products Expert | Bank Austria


“ Thanks to her expertise, we were able to significantly improve our user experience and the feedback from our customers was consistently positive.”

Danijela Dimitrijevich

Lending Products Expert | Bank Austria


“ Thanks to her expertise, we were able to significantly improve our user experience and the feedback from our customers was consistently positive.”

Danijela Dimitrijevich

Lending Products Expert | Bank Austria