Designing a stress-free digital borrowing experience for small businesses

Overview

ANZ’s small business loan application process was entirely manual. It took customers up to three weeks to get a decision. 43% of applications had to be reworked by bank staff. Tighter government lending regulations were also adding more paperwork. Customers were looking to alternative lenders and our brief was to address these challenges.

The problem

Not only was the process slow and frustrating for customers, it was losing ANZ a chunk of the market it didn’t fully know about. Our research showed a segment of small business owners who were qualifying for loans but dropping out before completing the application. The complexity of the process was the barrier for them, not their creditworthiness.

Design approach

I led research and design across the project. We started with exploratory work, talking to both customers and the bank staff who were processing the applications to understand where the real friction was.

That shaped three areas of focus for us:

Improve the experience for the business owner applying
Find room to grow lending within the regulatory constraints
Reduce the internal cost of processing and rework

The main design push was allowing owners connect their accounting software directly to the application. That eliminated most of the manual data entry, reduced paperwork and made near-instant decisioning possible through a new credit decisioning engine.

Synthesising research findings — Synthesising and making sense of our research findings in our project room where we could walk stakeholders through early insights and gather feedback

Sharing prototype sketches with stakeholders — Placing prototype sketches in hallways meant we could gather feedback from stakeholders in between meetings and rapidly iterate

We also tested a more conversational interface (guided questions rather than a form) to make the process feel less like a compliance exercise and more like something a real person could get through.

Throughout the project we created different outputs for different audiences. Senior stakeholders got one-pagers and video clips. Teams got detailed research findings. Making the work legible at different levels was part of making it stick.

Final solution — mobile loan application — Our final solution allowed business owners to apply for a loan from their mobile, connect accounting software and receive a decision compared to the old paper application process

Outcomes

A real-time application replacing a weeks-long manual process
Reduced rework for bank staff. The cleaner data input made a material difference
A clearer picture of the market ANZ was missing. This reframed the project from ‘fix the process’ to ‘grow the business’