Account opening for a brokerage firm

The job was to let a client open an account without friction and to let Renaissance Capital, an emerging markets investment bank, meet every requirement it has to meet. Onboarding with the extra steps taken out, where an error stops being a dead end.

Client: Renaissance Capital
Geography: Nicosia · London · New York · Nairobi
Role: UX/UI Designer
Platform: Web
Flow: Remote account opening
Domain: Investment and brokerage

A laptop showing the first step of the “Become a Renaissance Broker client” form on sculptural gray-blue planes

What sells investment products is a process the client understands, conditions written in plain terms, and help at every step.

The fight for the mass investor has moved almost entirely online. The quality of the digital service decides which broker a client picks, whether they stay and how much they trade.

Size and a known name no longer settle it. The client has to get the same experience across every digital service, with no break between them.

A spread of white Renaissance Capital onboarding screens: the SMS code, personal details, citizenship and tax residency — The cascade of onboarding screens: one step, one question. An error turns into a hint that tells the client what to do next.

Goals and principles

Between wanting to invest and actually working an account, an investor goes through several stages, and at every one of them a digital service stands in the way. One of the heaviest steps is remote account opening.

Account opening is two things at once. For the client it is an outside product. Inside the firm it is a process made of KYC, a set of checks, compliance control and security. It has to meet every regulatory requirement and still bend when the rules change.

The service still has to be comfortable to use. The client can see what data they are handing over, why it is needed and how it will be kept.

The Citizenship and Tax residency steps of the form, with crimson accents on a pale blue background — The legally heavy steps, citizenship and tax residency, are broken into short forms with questions a person can answer.

Process

Knowing the audience and having audited investment services before let me look at the product the way an investor does and see the problems, both the obvious ones and the ones only somebody inside the domain notices. The other side of the work was following the regulatory requirements that bind a financial firm.

When we wrote the flows we used the standard split of the investment audience, and took in what experienced clients need alongside what beginners need.

The house crimson on silk, the tuning fork for the whole visual system.

Interviews with clients from several segments, an expert audit, usability testing, competitive review. Each of those showed the broker’s digital services from a different side, and together they showed where account opening could get easier.

Type and styles

ALS Hauss and ALS Wagon, a calm scale, and the states of fields, buttons and dropdown lists worked out to the pixel, from placeholder through to error.

A specimen of ALS Hauss and ALS Wagon and white component sheets with fields, buttons and states, on crimson silk

The design system palette: the crimson Primary #CE2F76 scale from tone 900 down to 50 with transparency levels, gray-blue Secondary and utility colors — The product palette: crimson Primary #CE2F76, a tonal scale from 900 to 50 plus transparency levels down to 8%, gray-blue Secondary and a utility shade for every state.

Outcome

An account now opens in a matter of minutes. The checks used to take several days. The processes inside the firm around account opening got shorter as well. That comparison is the client’s, and I could not verify it.

Internal project metrics are not published. I can go through the flow, the field states and the compliance checks in a call.

A laptop showing the final “Your form is complete” screen on white silk — The end of the path: the form is filled, the documents go out for signing, and a manager takes the client from there.

All work

A client path where people get stuck? Tell me and we will take the extra steps out.