Yimika Osunsanya
Lumina is a wealth management assistant which helps financial advisors automate processes
My Role
Product designer: Visual design, Interaction design, User flows, UX research, User validation
My Team
Amol Patil, Product manager/CEO
Ahrar Monsur, Software engineer/CTO
Ethan Wang, Software engineer
Timeline and status
2 months Launched in August 2024
Overview
Today, financial advisors spend, on average 12-15 hours per client writing summaries, updating their CRM, emails, and meeting notes. Off-the-shelf solutions have been attempted, but they fall short in providing the necessary context, tone, and specificity that advisors require.
Using our WealthLLM platform, we’re building an experience that allows advisors to connect various tools they use (e.g. Google Meet,, Sharefile, Calendars, CRM etc) and fully automate the summary drafts, emails and notes in their personal workflow.
Additionally, the advisor can curate the body of regulations and references that the LLM is sourcing to be specific to their client base. Initial product will could be delivered as a standalone offering as well as an embedded solution for financial institutions and partners.
Highlights
Context
Financial advising can be repetitive
Financial advisors spend about 50% of their time doing repetitive tasks
It takes an advisor 36.5 hours on average, end to end, to deliver a holistic financial plan. While â…“ of this time is spent in meeting with clients and understanding their needs, â…” is spent on the mid-office and back-office tasks. Client data is spread across disparate systems, making it time consuming for an advisor to stitch together a 360-view of their client. Additionally, manual data entry and copy pasting is still the norm when building financial models and plans.
50%
of advisors’ time are spent doing repetitive tasks
4+
tools on average each day to conduct their tasks
< 12%
only of tools not focused on financial and data analysis
Research Process
Due to time constraints, research needed to be conducted rapidly hence limiting the number of interviews or observations which could be carried out
4 User Interviews
4 Product Demos
50+ pages of Team Docs
Financial Advisors
"I feel like to get new features, I need to move CRMs and that's a daunting process"
"We at (redacted financial company) honestly have access to a lot of analytical power but with so many tools, it can feel like information gets lost in the cracks"
"The amount of time I spend per day crafting emails and responses or locating files and call notes is pretty large... that's quite a lot of my day"
"My office is too small to hire more administrative hands but it doesn't help that all my advisors are stuck doing small things"
Lumina Team
"We don't want to be just another CRM"
"How can we reduce the amount of time spent by financial advisors doing work no one likes"
User Journey
Financial advisors are involved in a series of tasks each day, most critically the seven listed below. The steps highlighted show the steps in the the user journey with the most pain-points currently
Review Emails
Sentiment: Difficult to sort through entire inbox
Current tools: Gmail
Data Analysis
Sentiment: Fun part of the job
Current tools: Many CRMs on market
Client Calls
Sentiment: Key part of process
Current tools:
Conferencing tools , Otter
Check Calendar
Sentiment: Advisors don't tend to mind this step
Current tools: Google calendar
Client follow-up
Sentiment: Sometimes difficult to locate notes for follow up
Current tools: None
Client Intake
Sentiment: Manual entry of data which is inconvenient
Current tools: CRMs
Track Portfolios
Sentiment: Fun part of the job
Current tools: Many CRMs on market
Problem
Many tools, no ease
Too many tools are really great at analysis so Lumina needed a different USP
As shown in the user journey above, CRMs (Client Relationship Managers) exist in various types and have varying capabilities. Most financial advisors use anywhere from 5-12+ apps on the backend and are the primary reason for the overhead on the back-office. So Lumina made the decision to tackle meeting summaries and scheduling as its first feature, something other platforms weren't focused on. But there were challenges:
Integration to multiplatforms
With all the current apps, it was imperative that Lumina could integrate with a lot
2 month launch schedule
As there was a race to launch before the end of summer, features needed to be prioritized
Overwhelming by nature
Repetition can be overwhelming, yet Lumina needed to offer users a smooth ride
Contextual AI
With the industry, it was important that Lumina's AI did not get in the way and still gave a user control
There were multiple unique features brainstormed to bring value to advisors but with a tight timeline, I had to prioritize one for launch and testing
With the time constraints, I prioritized the features based on Impact and Complexity of build;
Impact: This was based on user feedback and hearing from financial advisors what parts of the process were repetitious. features were rated on how much they could affect the most difficult parts of the advisors' job
Complexity: Based on engineering feedback and impact to build timeline
New client intake automation
Craft 360º client summary
Compare multi-platform data
Draft contracts and agreements for clients
Create financial plans and schedule check-ins for client
Searching for information across integrated platforms
Send reminders to clients to encourage actions
Summarize calls and automate follow up actions
Create visual assets and artifacts for client calls
High impact
High complexity of build
Low complexity of build
Low impact
Send reminders to clients to encourage actions
New client intake automation
Summarize calls and automate follow up actions
Compare multi-platform data
Craft 360º client summary
Draft contracts and agreements for clients
Create financial plans and schedule check-ins for client
Searching for information across integrated platforms
Create visual assets and artifacts for client calls
The Challenge
Create a virtual meeting assistant
Craft a platform to deliver meeting summaries and follow-ups in a simple, intuitive way
Basic design principles
Clarity
Simple, uncomplicated user flows
Ownership
Make the advisor feel in control of their clients
Delight
Break the mundane with some light heartedness
With multiple different call note takers on the market, it was key to understand what pain points within this process Lumina should solve for
Upon studying other popular note-takers on the market, I was able to analyze specific needs of financial advisors which were not currently being met by these other tools. This helped craft a roadmap for the functionality of the selected features
Otter AI
Fireflies AI
Grain
Lumina
Meeting Integration
?
Customizable Summarization
Action Item Automation
Financial Service Oriented
User flows
Meeting assistance is a cycle of activities
An advisor is able to view a snapshot of the day's activities, previous calls, and action items.
The advisor participates in a call while Lumina, takes notes and suggests open items to discuss
Post-call, the advisor receives a notification to customize the summary appearance
Highlight to edit
The advisor highlights summary text for editing, and Lumina highlights similar words for mass editing
Lumina creates tables and financial documents based on the conversation and saves them to the client's profile
Lumina follows up with the advisor, providing follow-up items and an actionable response strategy
Firstly advisors need to be onboarded
Advisors are able to sign into Lumina and create the individual profiles using their google login details or by receiving a link to their emails for a password-less experience
GIF: User login and profile creation
Quick actions should be accessible at a glance
On the Home Screen the most important actions for launch can be found:
-
Adding new clients (as seen in Fig 1.)
-
and Creating new meetings (as seen in Fig 2.)
As Lumina is integrated into calendar apps, an advisor is also able to see their scheduled meetings as well as pending tasks
Image: Dashboard on Home Screen
Fig 1.
GIF: New client creation
Fig 2.
GIF: New meeting creation
Transcription at it's best
Through the client's tab, advisors are able to view all their clients at a glance. The Lumina bot, (a meeting transcription bot) attends the advisors meetings allowing them to review transcripts from their client's meetings through this tab
GIF: Viewing and editing transcript summaries
But... summaries were central to launch
The real shining star of this specific launch is Lumina's ability to craft transcription summaries which can include subheadings, tables, etc. which makes information from calls easy to digest
GIF: Toggling between summary types
Customizing summary templates
Due to the importance of the summary feature, it was important to make the customization feature elegant, hence the need for multiple options to be rapidly tested. Below is a comparison of 3 such options and the tradeoffs considered for each
Option 1
GIF: Category fields option
Option 2
GIF: Preset templates option
Option 3
GIF: Type to edit option
Time to complete: Lengthy
Multiple fields to fill made this option lengthy
Time to complete: Short
Fast to create due to limited preset options
Time to complete: Varies
Dependent on amount of detail user enters
Level of control: Limited
Limited control of summaries
Level of control: Limited
Limited control of summaries
Level of control: Extensive
Extensive control of summaries
Ease of use: Simple
Simple to understand and use
Ease of use: Simple
Simple to understand and use
Ease of use: Medium
Takes some time to understand, easy to use
Selected as solution for launch
**Potential for future use once users become familiar with summary creation
And metrics were necessary to measure success of the summary templates
In order to ensure that the design executed was performing as intended beyond my time at Lumina, I discussed specific KPIs with the CEO by which to measure user engagement and satisfaction, 4 of the developed KPIs are listed below;
Time Saved per Call
Measure the reduction in post-call administrative tasks compared to manual note-taking.
Summary Customization Time
Track how long advisors spend customizing summaries using the tool.
Post-Call Follow-up Time
Track how quickly follow-ups are sent using the suggested email and action prompts.
Satisfaction Score
Gather qualitative feedback on ease of use, accuracy, and efficiency through surveys.
Visual design
A fresh take on finances
Lumina's goal was to be simple to follow, simple to use
As the premiere designer on the team, it was my job to create Lumina's design system, and there was a clear direction; creating crisp, layered components with a simple design language
Image: Client card design
Image & GIF: Responsive list items
Image: Typography & Color
Future development
...But there's still a lot in store
Lumina is still well underway after launching its premiere feature
But before I say too much, Here's a short video which I created describing the vision for the platform
Video
Retrospective
What I would do differently
Seek more feedback from users at consistent intervals
Designing for launch was a great experience and effort which received positive feedback from users, but due to the time crunch, some interaction and informational elements would have benefitted from being validated with a larger number of users prior to launch. Looking forward, it is critical to schedule in to design sprints curated time to run multiple validation tests with users