Competition for the mass investor has almost entirely moved online: the quality of digital service now determines the client’s choice, loyalty, and how active they are in the app. Being a large, reliable, and recognizable broker is no longer enough - it is crucial to offer the best digital service and create a seamless, continuous user experience.
In 2020, a major universal broker, trusted by clients and committed to the ideal technical functionality of all services, approached us. Together, we set out to find insights for a successful digital service development strategy: assess the company's competitive position in the evolving market, identify growth points, illustrate them with examples of best implementations, and drive all initiatives by demonstrating their impact on business metrics.
Contents
At the start of the project, the broker’s key objective was to increase client activity and loyalty, prevent churn, and consequently drive digital sales of products and commission income. The changes targeted clients in the Affluent segment (investment portfolio of $10,000 to $100,000) and HNWI (portfolio over $100,000), including both existing and new clients.
Our client was highly recognizable in the HNWI segment - investors who handle large sums, primarily trade through terminals, and rarely use personal accounts. Affluent clients, with smaller turnovers, are much more sensitive to digital services - they need comprehensive and convenient online management of their investment accounts.
At the project’s inception, the agency already had extensive experience in the investment sector, and all team members were experienced users of investment products themselves.
Throughout their journey from the desire to invest to the active use of a brokerage account, investors go through several stages, each involving interaction with digital services.
This can be a separate educational portal or a section integrated into the main digital services. It serves as the first point of contact with a client who likely hasn't opened a brokerage account yet and wants to understand what it entails. The goal is to correctly convert this learner into a client.
If the education stage is successfully completed, the client visits the broker’s website to open an account, gain access to the personal account, and start trading. This is where the main part of onboarding occurs. The broker’s task is to guide the client through product selection (helping them decide what exactly they need) and the online account opening process, ensuring the client does not get lost or abandon the application.
For clients to actively use their brokerage accounts, it is crucial to provide a convenient and simple digital service where all product management tasks can be handled. At this stage, the key interface the client interacts with is the personal account on the website and the mobile applications for iOS and Android.
At the account opening stage, the broker provides necessary information, motivates the client to work with securities, and helps them start investing. We evaluated the client journey through the educational portal: where to begin, how to choose a course, how to complete it, what the learner will gain in the end, what to do if there are remaining questions, and how to start investing afterward.
The first step to opening a brokerage account should be clear, and the last step as simple as possible
The competition in the field of educational materials for investors is quite high. In addition to the specialized resources of the brokers themselves, there are many online portals and YouTube and Telegram channels where investors can find the necessary information in any format - articles, videos, online and offline events. To engage users in consuming content on a specific platform, besides providing valuable content on various topics, it is essential to ensure an ideal user experience and meticulously plan the technical implementation.
Our knowledge of the audience and experience auditing investment services allowed us to see the service through the eyes of an investor and identify all problems - both obvious ones and those noticeable only to an insider.
A common problem is when all links to additional content in educational videos on the training portal or app lead to the broker's main website. If a user follows the link but is not yet ready to open an account, they will want to return to the original content. If there is no convenient seamless navigation, they are likely to get lost, not receive the necessary amount of educational content, and be unable to decide on opening an account. This will reduce the conversion rate of learners to clients.
During the onboarding stage and the sale of the first product, the likelihood of winning over a client is higher if the broker provides comprehensive and useful information about the products:
When creating scenarios, we relied on the standard division of the investment product audience and considered the needs of both experienced and novice clients in two segments:
Novices have never opened brokerage accounts with any broker but are interested in investing as an alternative way to preserve and grow their savings. They seek guidance on which products to focus on and how to best assemble a portfolio—they need clear indications that the broker offers help in trading on the stock exchange.
Experienced investors have assets in brokerage accounts with brokers amounting to over $10,000 and have been investing for more than two years. They evaluate specific broker offers and compare them with their understanding of the market situation. They need deeper expertise and confidence that the broker offers solid support in executing their strategy.
An investor looking to open a product on the website needs information: they need to understand the product's mechanics and be confident they are making a beneficial investment. Pop-up tips, outdated analytical information, and complex tariff and product structures are not helpful. A simple comparative table of tariffs, a seamless transition to account opening from the preferred product or tariff page, and a well-thought-out UX for the account opening application are much more useful.
A multi-level product structure can confuse new clients when making a choice. Without guidance, it is difficult to navigate unfamiliar names, and links to detailed information for each product separately do not help. This process takes too much time compared to a simple and clear table. The client is likely to try another broker to solve their problem.
The majority of insights about the broker’s personal account were obtained from interviews with clients. Due to our extensive investment experience, we were able to establish a trusting and open dialogue with both Affluent-segment representatives and HNWI-investors who understand the subject on a fundamentally different level. We discussed how they got into investing, what tasks they are accustomed to solving in their personal account and which ones they are not, how they think about investments and their management, the problems they encounter and how they are used to solving them, and what they like and dislike about the digital services of different brokers.
We aimed to explain the mechanics of problems and solutions: why users encounter barriers, how competitors' digital services manage client interactions at this stage, and what needs to be done in response. References included entire scenarios that combined best practices to solve several problems simultaneously.
One barrier for HNWI segment clients - experienced qualified investors - was the withholding of income tax by the broker on any withdrawal from the brokerage account. They are willing to keep their portfolios with a single broker if the personal account allows them to separate the portfolio and optimize tax deductions.
Currently, they hold speculative income securities in one portfolio and try not to withdraw funds until the end of the tax period. In another, they keep securities with coupon and dividend income to withdraw funds before the end of the tax period without additional tax withholdings.
The more barriers that arise in the process of interacting with the personal account, the higher the likelihood that the client will choose other ways of trading or another broker—especially if their digital services allow for faster, more convenient task completion and provide all necessary information in the process. To stimulate client activity in the digital service, it is essential to provide maximum opportunities and information, regardless of whether they are using a computer or a mobile phone.
For a brokerage service with complex functionality, this means simplifying interfaces and adapting them to conveniently solve a variety of client tasks. It also means bringing the personal account on the website and the mobile app to a unified set of features, allowing the client to be fully mobile. This is particularly important when it comes to developing the personal account into a full-fledged dashboard for portfolio control, an analytical service for making investment decisions, or a sales showcase for products.
This case study highlights the importance of understanding user needs and preferences to develop a successful digital service strategy for investors. By focusing on user experience, educational resources, and seamless account management, the project led to significant improvements in user engagement, satisfaction, and sales. The strategic approach to addressing both mass-market and HNWI investors' needs ensured a competitive edge in the digital brokerage services market.
Every year we conduct up to 15 studies of digital services. These are industry benchmarks that reflect the state of the market and trends.
