Payments & systems - Financial Services

THE COMPANY

WorldFirst - An international foreign exchange brokerage working to provide better rates than the banks in both B2B and B2C markets, with specific focus on expansion within the Chinese market.

THE GOAL

Enable efficiencies by creating an interface for FX dealers to book trades with multiple payments within the back office systems. Ensure scalability across all regions and currency pairs which may require differing behaviour based on local regulations.

THE USERS

Internal FX dealers working in; The UK, The US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and The Netherlands. 

Discovery

  1. Identifying existing user flows for both internal users (FX dealer) and the client

  2. Understanding legalities behind different currency pairings, limitations with compliance and impacts of combining multiple currency pairs within one flow

  3. Identifying known pain points and areas for improvement with FX dealers.

Sketching solutions with users

1 The Existing user flows

  • Carrying out observation sessions with FX dealers, identifying; key tasks during the process, the ecosystems used to gather the right information, the approval process, the interaction with customers both over the phone and via email, and the current length of time to complete multiple payments

  • Identifying different needs for regional FX dealers, specifically in China and Hong Kong where payment processes are more complex due to regulations around movement of CNY and CNH when concerned with foreign currency exchange

  • Identifying comparisons and points of difference between the dealer flow and the client flow on the customer facing web application. The more these flows can replicate each other, the more natural the process will feel for the client

2 The legal part

Working with compliance and legal in global offices on a continuous basis to ensure all proposed solutions remained viable.

3 Teardown the current process

  • Working with the FX dealers who know the system inside out, asking them to critique the current build and gaining insight into other systems they have used in the past.

  • Running a “How Might We” session with the FX dealers to understand where their problems really lie

  • Working sessions of Crazy 8s with the dealers to ideate around solutions for the outcomes of the “How Might we” session

  • Identifying all the bad paths a dealer may encounter during the process to help guide on next steps and remind on regulations.

THE SOLUTION

A three step process allowing the dealer to add multiple payments to the flow, select cover rate or enter a rate manually, enter buy or sell amount, select forward dates for payments, and automating payment confirmation and requests to clients.  

Multiple flows of key component

Key elements within the interface

The new payments flow was added into our existing back office system and given as an additional option to the existing flow. FX dealers were then asked to try out both, before reporting back to us on their findings and then continuing to use the version they found easiest and more efficient. 68% of FX dealers chose to move across to the new flow. Given human nature and the tendency to avert from change, this was a great initial success. It also marked key areas for iteration by understanding why the remaining 32% chose to stick with what they know.