Escrow Express

Project Summary

Background

Escrow clients managed their escrow sub accounts through Capital One agents and the processes and tools that the agents used were outdated, clunky, and not intuitive. We were tasked with redesigning and converting the existing escrow management platform to an application called Escrow Express to enable our clients to self-service their sub accounts online, including opening and closing accounts, transferring funds in real time, and pulling the reporting they need on demand.

The Problem

How might we design and create an intuitive platform for escrow customers to self-service their escrow accounts?

Business Goals

  • Portfolio growth

  • Enable customers to self-service their escrow accounts

    • Open and close sub-accounts

    • Move money between accounts

    • Upload documents (i.e. tax forms)

    • Find and filter through multiple master accounts, sub-accounts, and transactions

    • Disburse remaining funds when an account is closed

My Role

  • Product Designer

Team

  • Product manager, 5 developers, 2 product designers

Who are we designing for?

  • Escrow agents in a variety of industries, i.e. property management, title companies, 1031 exchanges, law firms, and funeral homes, who directly manage sub accounts and funds

  • Broader user research about commercial and business customers was conducted at a larger scale (you can read my earlier case study about commercial bank research)

 

Diverge

Mapping User Flows

I mapped out each user flow to prepare for creating wireframes.

Cross-functional Brainstorm Sessions

For each of the user flows we had to redesign and rebuild, I worked closely with product and engineering to quickly come up with different ways we could approach the solution. Since we were working with a legacy system with a lot of complexity, it was crucial to get their feedback and ideas earlier in the process.

 

Quick Iteration and Feedback Cycles

After workshopping some directions, mocking up some high-fidelity designs was a relatively quick process due to being able to use our design system. When we could, we reviewed our designs with our clients in remote feedback sessions.

Interview guide and documentation for remote client feedback and usability sessions

User dashboard. This was a quick overview of a user’s master accounts and high priority action items. Not all Master Accounts are shown in this view if there are more than 3 and in user testing, there were some discoverability problems with users being able to find how to view all accounts. However, we decided to keep this view and we explicitly made this tradeoff in order to keep the Unfunded Sub Accounts and Missing Tax Forms modules above the fold.

Advanced search functionality for accounts. The trickiest part of this is that sub-accounts are nested under Master accounts. There needed to be a clear way to show the nesting when users performed a search that pulled all of the accounts that matched the search criteria. I chose to use a breadcrumb pattern to denote nesting, which also provides an easy way to find the specific master account.

Advanced search functionality for transactions. The most difficult part of designing a search result for a transaction was that each transaction is always from one account to another and it could technically show up as two results—as a transfer out AND a transfer in. The way I solved for that was to show directionality by utilizing an arrow from one account to another, which enabled us to only show one search result.

In earlier explorations of the advanced search functionality, the filters were on top and ran horizontally across the page. I moved them to the left side so that users could search and filter, and the results would be updated in real time on the right side of the page.

Wireflow for when a user closes an account and selects the method to disburse any remaining funds in the account. Users can select to transfer an amount to a master account or send a check to an address via USPS. They can also split the funds and have different disbursement methods for each portion.

Once remaining funds are distributed, the biggest pain point for users is that they don’t know where their funds are. I designed a progress bar for users to know the status of each disbursement.

When multiple accounts are closed, this view shows users an overview of each check disbursement status.

Converge

Usability Testing

We also tested our designs at the usability lab at the 1717 Innovation Center with proxy clients. The entire cross-functional team (product, engineering, and design) conducted the study, observed, and debriefed together.

 

Delivery and Impact

Escrow Express is live! Within 2 weeks of going live, we estimate that this platform has helped bring in an additional $100M in deposits to the bank and increased user efficiency by 60%. Users have continued to give incredibly positive feedback on the new experience and expressed that they want to work with Capital One more closely for future improvements. You can find the main product page here.