Roboadvisors - Taking The Wealth Management Landscape By Storm
For decades we have relied on human trial and error for investments. My work on Emotomy has cut against the grain.
Introduction
My first client engagement working at Cognizant Softvision (fka Devbridge) was with Northern Trust, one of the oldest banks in continuous operation.
A subset of the larger financial institution, Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) is a wealth management firm that provides tooling to help investors navigate volatile markets and manifest long-term investment growth. One of their offerings was Emotomy, a platform engaging CIOs, advisors, and investors all in one ecosystem under their custom portfolios as well as NTAM portfolio offerings.
I embarked on one of the most complex journeys of my career - designing in constantly ambiguous problem spaces, navigating warring parties for desired approval, and working in while improving an un-maintained design library and master file. Along the way, I learned extensively on fintech, wealth management, and the world of banking.
‣ Risk Tolerance Questionnaire configuration
‣ Investment Solutions feature
‣ Goals Planning workflow for investors
‣ Updated design system and pattern library
‣ Worked on product consulting team with PM, business analyst, and engineers.
‣ Engaged discovery & delivery to provide designs for implementation for Emotomy product.
The world of banking is covered with red tape when it comes to building software.
Despite the great and grand ideas that came from design sprints, I observed an overwhelming process to push designs through the pipeline to mark an item "Dev Ready." Weekly meetings with new asks from stakeholders, jumping through hoops with legal & compliance teams, and critical items taking precedence over feature rollouts, were all events that I witnessed one too often in the process of pushing out designs for net-new functionality.
Such is the nature of the world of finance as it applies to the bank. As a consulting team we were dealing with unforeseen circumstances that were, for the most part, out of our control.
What we could control was how we built alignment with Northern Trust - over time through the engagement I was able to build rapport and buy-in to building design processes that would more efficiently push net-new work through the approval process. And while that design work embarked on its org-wide tour for additional checks, our team was geared with discovery activities performed at least 2-3 sprints ahead.
A handful of things I worked on:
Want to hear more?
I'm happy to chat more about my work at Basic.Space. Send me a ping at hello@shannadige.com if you'd like to learn more!
