Reducing annuity purchase journey from 1 week to under 3 days
Reducing annuity purchase journey from 1 week to under 3 days
Reducing annuity purchase journey from 1 week to under 3 days
Role
UX Lead
Duration
6 Months
Client
Status
Shipped
Overview
Introduction
Even in 2023, Challenger's (Australia's largest annuity firm) annuity purchase processes were entirely paper based. This meant long wait times before purchases were completed, physical collaboration requirements with financial advisors and inefficiency.
My team was brought in to digitize their processes and design new investor and advisor portals.
Collaboration
Internal team
Product Manager
Engineering
DevOps
Client teams
Branding
Legal
Marketing
Design
Design manager
UX Lead (Me)
4 junior designers
Important Context & Constraints
Challenger sells annuities
Annuities are long-term contracts with an insurance company designed for retirement income.
Advisors help purchase and manage investments
Investors can ask for internal or external financial advisors for help with any processes for purchasing and managing their investments.
The end users are over the age of 60
People over the age of 60, usually have low digital confidence and require guidance and simplified explanations.
The platform needed to be accessible
Finance is highly regulated and must adhere to accessibility guidelines under Disability Discrimination Act (DDA, 1992).
Impact
Reduced average time from contact to purchase completion of annuity from over 1 week to under 3 days due to digitization
We accomplished this by converting all in person processes to digital and enabling online collaboration with financial advisors and faster verifications
Design Process
This was a 0-1 design project that required validation and go ahead from branding, users, legal and marketing teams and C-suite, so I followed a multi step approach to the design.
Discovery workshops
I conducted workshops and whiteboarding sessions with internal stakeholders to understand business needs and map out investor and advisor user flows
Mapping user flows
I collaborated with the product manager to map out complex user journeys and business requirements using Visio and Excel
Wireframing
Since each flow required validation from different teams like engineering, legal, marketing and branding, I validated designs early to reduce rework at high fidelity stages.
This was specially important for validation of the legal disclaimers and language used in the interface.
Design system
To ensure the platform can scale over time, ensure design consistency and reduce design and development efforts, I created a robust design system keeping the company branding and WCAG principles at the forefront of it.
(Detailed study coming soon)
To ensure the platform can scale over time, ensure design consistency and reduce design and development efforts, I created a robust design system keeping the company branding and WCAG principles at the forefront of it.
(Detailed study coming soon)
Deliverables
After 6 months of fast paced work, the team delivered
16
End to end processes
18
Digitized purchase forms
200+
Prototyped screens
Jobs to be done based dashboard
Key features
Easy entry points for all high priority tasks, customized based on roles
Keyboard accessible
Low cognitive load
Easy advisor access
Key features
Uses AFS license against ASIC database to allow licensed financial advisors to use platform
Removes verification friction for advisors to increase adoption
Role based access management
Key features
Enables financial firms to delegate access with appropriate permissions
Enables B2B collaboration for Challenger
This was just a glimpse.
Want to learn more about the project?
This was just a glimpse.
Want to learn more about the project?
Get in touch
Let's talk design
I'm always looking to connect with interesting people
©2026 Tanay Arora.
~Life is too short to eject USB safely
Let's talk design
I'm always looking to connect with interesting people
©2026 Tanay Arora.
~Life is too short to eject USB safely
Design needs space to breathe.
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