APP • 2023

Loans Agaisnt Mutual Funds

Scope

Ideation

0 to 1 design

Visual design

Role

Product Design

Hand-off

Testing

Timeline

3 months

Platform

Mobile

Overview

Fi aimed to disrupt the secured lending market by making loans against mutual funds accessible to a broader audience. This historically complex financial product, typically reserved for high net-worth individuals, presented an opportunity for innovation. We envisioned a completely digital platform that would streamline the loan application and management process. This would increase accessibility while offering competitive interest rates and flexible repayment terms to improve user experience.

Even people without a credit history could access this product with ease.

Improve credit access to people

Keep the experience familiar but introduce new features catered for podcast listening.

Offer a second product in our lineup

Why secured loans?

Fi had a large base of user who invest in mutual funds. As we expand our lending portfolio and base, we could unlock this base to lend to with a reduced risk.

Growing base of investors

The people who invest in mutual funds will increase to 145 million by the year 2023. This is a huge base to address for giving secured loans to.

Access to new to credit users

Secured loans give us the flexibility to lend to users without a credit score too and in turn help them build a credit score too.

Lowest interest rate

If one has to take on debt, it's good to do it at minimal cost. A low interest rate would be an attractive offer to many.

Mutual Funds are for everyone: 145 million investors in 2023 prove that financial growth is here for everyone.

How are we different?

It was not about joining the race, but
leading it. We wanted to set a good example of lending.

We're breaking the conventional product focus only on HNIs in India and make it mainstream.

Digital platform

With our insights and analysers, a user could better manage their finance and take on debt without much risk.

Tie to Fi ecosystem

Everything we touch turns to a great user experience. We plan to do the same to loans against mutual funds.

Great user experience

Our partnership with Federal would allow us to undercut a lot of rivals and offer loans at very low rates.

Lend better

Principles for better lending

Keep it simple

Loan journeys can be daunting, we tried to keep the journey minimal and avoided jargon to keep things approachable.

Celebrate the small moments

Often loan applications can be long and boring. We built smaller celebrations and milestones in the journey to keep a user engaged.

Build transparency & trust

For a secured loan, you are not only risking your investment but also taking on debt. Having transparency with the terms and trust in the system was paramount.

Fall gracefully

With an untested system, we were expecting a lot of issues to happen with the initial launch. We design for errors and edge cases from the beginning and looped in customer support early on.

Addressing doubts

This is a new experience for most. We wanted to address any doubt at the moment so a user doesn't have to leave the app to understand the product better.

Going hi-fi

We took a whole new approach to designing the experience that would then set the experience for the other loan products. We went with a minimal and clean approach that puts focus on the main action in a friendly and approachable manner. Also, guiding users with any doubts and confusion they have right on the app without leaving.

Motion for message

Our key values were simple. To avoid users from scrolling, we had a nifty animation calling out our key features to convince users.

Keeping it simple

Let our user know it's not rocket science to take a loan with us. It's as easy as hailing a cab or ordering food.

Reassurance

Everything around finance is a potential point of worry. We want to bring clarity and reassurance about what we are doing is safe.

Custom wait screens

There were varying wait periods between different stages of the journey. We introduced
custom wait screens to keep a user engaged and prevent drop-offs.

Milestones marks

We didn't want a permanent progress meter in our journey. To still give people a sense of closure, we added these milestone screens to help people realise they are nearing the end of the journey.

Celebrate moments

Along the long journey of getting a loan, we wanted to celebrate small wins and keep a user excited about the application.

Continuing the context

We tried to strike a balance between the actions on a single page versus keeping the context for the loan on a single page. Overloading a user with too many actions could make the process overwhelming.

Transparency at everystage

Loan apps are infamous for dark patterns and hiding key information from a user. We differ by making all the charges transparent for a user & aim to build trust in our product

Contextual alerts

Between all the bills in ones' life, we don't want them to remember another one. We
surface alerts and action upfront for a user to easily acknowledge it and act.

On time payments a habit

We added quick access to the recently played podcasts, the shows users follow and various categories for podcasts.

Unique referral program

Informing the user about podcast, taking their language and genre preferences for podcasts

Impact

The launch of the product has had many hurdles and we are still trying to fix a lot of things. The launch has been less than ideal but we plan to keep pushing and reach the goal we had set for ourselves. Having said that. feedback from our users has been positive. This is what's keeping us driven.

10cr

Worth of loan disbursed in 2 months

40K

Users have seen their secured loan offer

Final Words

For a Version 1, we took satisfaction in this result. We had to skip a few essential steps to tackle the problem due to the tight timelines of the project. As we move ahead, there are a few other things we wished to do in the next phase of the project and set an example for the industry.

Build for all cases

There was a demand for content in regional languages. Having more content in different language could remove the entry barrier that English poses for so many people.