Remortgaging Exploration
Role: UX Designer and Researcher
The focus on this project steamed from a customer complaint about the financial difficulty question in which the customer was allowed to progress even though they had declared they were in financial difficulty. This then lead to them picking a product which was not suitable and filling out the forms with the provider only then to be declined a product. The problem around this question needed to be sorted quickly in according to FCA compliance. However my college and I decided this needed to be further investigated after a quick fix was found. This then lead to a decision to look across the whole remortgaging journey in order to improve revenue and customer understanding and trust in CtM.
Having to design a quick fix for the question, I decided to follow the style of messaging which is in the pet journey where people are asked if their pet has a pre-exisiting medical in which we can not get them an insurance quote. However the copy for the message this time had to have an element of reassurance for the customer as if they answer yes they have just declared that they are in financial difficulty and may need help with their finances especially in the current economic climate. That is why we have added a link to the impartial Citizens Advice and added a telephone number as well for the customer to call if needed. This message does not allow the customer to progress with a remortagae but does allow them some advice.
After realising this quick change in order to be FCA compliant we then decided to research the question further, do customers understand what the question means and is the advice we provide sufficient?
To get an opinion of the question I set up a Userzoom with 8 participants who have mortgages and are looking to remortgage. I asked them to use my prototype to Task 1 task about what they think the question is asking them and Task 2 is the added information when clicking yes helpful. When asking the participants what being in financial difficulty meant, 0/8 clearly identified or repeated our explanation about debt repayment or county court judgements but instead stated about everyday finances and making ends meet which is not official financial difficulty. This shows the question is misleading, in a time when the cost of living is rising it is important for CtM to adapt this in order to get people the best remortgaging deal.
A positive was that 7/8 participants thought the added text was helpful/useful, however many mentioned we could do more to help the customer when they have clicked YES, of course this will need to be discussed with L&C as we are not allowed to offer too much advice to customers due to FCA regulations.
I decide that a card sort would be the best way to determine how the questions should be in a logical order, according to the customer. This card sort was a UserZoom study with 100 people split propositionally in the demographic groups of CtM customers. The study found that there was two groups in-which the question divided easily into. Then the question that we had already looked at was grouped very separately as it does not ask the customer about their property or what they want in a mortgage instead asking them about their situation. From this a something per page design would be best as no more than 3 questions where grouped together which also works with customers process load, further more the financial difficulty question will again be looked into. This project is still on going.
