About/CV
Case study —
Private Investment Platform
( Overview )
The Private Investment Platform is a self-service platform providing clients with access to a diversified range of private equity and private market deals. Geared towards sophisticated clients, the platform empowers them to view available offerings and relevant deal information. This digital transformation and streamlining of previously manual processes leads to an increase of the bank’s wallet share and assets under management.
( Scope )
Discovery and ideation through design workshops with business stakeholders. Management and execution of a proof-of-concept for internal alpha testing and beta testing with a group of selected clients.
( Role )
Role: Product Designer, Product Owner
June 2022 - August 2023
Private Investment Platform: An Overview
The Private Investment Platform is a product born from the lab’s innovation methodology, a process that encompasses ideation, discovery, scoping, incubation, and scale. The business came to us with a new idea to envision and create a digital platform to provide the bank’s Ultra High Net Worth (UHNW) and Single Family Office (SFO) clients with a differentiated private equity platform.
( Milestones )
Understanding The Problem
User Interviews
By employing the double diamond design thinking methodology, we started off by conducting a design workshop involving various internal business stakeholders (product specialists, wealth planners and relationship managers) and external stakeholders (venture capitalists (VCs) and SFOs etc) along the value chain to understand more about the end-to-end process from the perspectives of private equity/market deal providers to the end banking clients (target end users). This also allows us to identify opportunities to create solutions that address user pain points. Research participants included: Deal providers (e.g. venture capitalists) Internal product specialists (e.g. alternative/private investments specialists) Relationship managers with clients dealing in private markets
Research Insights
Through user research, we found that the current process for private equity/market products is manual and onerous. The product team sources for deals through various channels and passes along the product offerings to the relationship managers. In turn, the relationship managers (RMs) will determine, through their own understanding of their clients, if they would be interested in such an offering. Once vetted, the RMs will orchestrate the handover of deal information (product presentations, fact sheets, marketing brochures etc) via email and follow up on any client queries. RMs also have to ensure that non-disclosure agreements are signed by the client prior to the handover of information. This process is burdensome and allows opportunities for mistakes to occur.
( Hypotheses )
Business
How might we give clients exclusive access to early stage deals?
Clients want access to early stage private equity deals in the market and the bank needs to offer different products to capture their interests
How might we provide early stage deals at low cost/risk to the bank?
Early stage deals can be risky so the bank needs to partner with deal providers who can source and conduct proper due diligence on deals
Product/Platform
How might we source & match clients to interested deals?
Clients are interested in investing in industries and companies that they are familiar in and can potentially personally contribute to the growth
How might we make it easier for a client to access and complete a deal?
The current email process is inefficient and manual. The platform needs to provide a self-service way for clients to view and subscribe to deals
( Old Process )
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With the Private Investment Platform, clients now have a self-service digital access to deals, deal information/documents, making it easier for them to subscribe to private equity deals. Relationship managers no longer need to actively share deal opportunities to their interested clients but can focus on executing on client requests and queries.
↓
( New Process )
Design of the platform
The platform provides users with the ability to view all available deals in the form of a marketplace. Deal cards offer quick access to relevant information, helping users make informed decisions on deals that piqued their interests. The platform allows users to start investing in private equity offerings in 4 simple steps.
( User Flow )
Onboarding
First-time users are required to accept a one-time platform terms & conditions and non-disclosure agreement. A digitally timestamped copy will be sent directly to the internal systems to be kept for record keeping.
Old process: Clients are required to submit a signed hardcopy form to be able to view private equity offerings.
Discover
Users can access the platform to view available deals. A filtering mechanism by deal type, region, sectors and deal stage allows users to find an offering most suitable for their needs. Users can easily access the necessary deal documentation such as deal teasers, product presentations and company financials, to make an informed investment decision.
Old process: Relationship managers send available deals to their clients via email on an adhoc basis
Invest
Users can request for their relationship manager or fund manager to reach out to them to go through the details of the deal or to execute the transaction.
Track
Users get timely notifications to new offerings on the platform and offerings that are ending soon so they do not miss out on any deals. Users can also track their existing subscriptions made via the platform.
( Components )
Deal Cards
Deals are displayed in a card format where necessary information such as funding progress to indicate the subscription demand is shown. Different colours represent different type of deals, from co-investment offerings, semi-liquid offerings and feeder funds.
Document Content Management System
A back-end content management system is put in place to upload, remove and edit deals if necessary, making the administrative process easy for the product team.
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