Applying legal design principles for simpler onboarding at a large financial institution
The challenge
A stringent onboarding process posed a challenge in the customer journey for a major financial institution. The process was defined in a long, text-based document, with several cross references and the use of jargon.
This meant that enquiries from customers were frequently escalated to Legal, as answers were not easily accessible in the document. Not only did this place a significant burden on the legal team, but the whole customer journey was being slowed, leading to frustration and complaints, often fielded by the customer-facing teams.
Ultimately, valuable team member time was being wasted, and customer trust and loyalty was at risk.
The solution
Working with the client’s legal team, our Legal Operations Consulting Team (LOC) identified the need to make the onboarding process document more user-friendly, accessible, and readable. This first meant understanding the current pain points of the onboarding team, the customers, and the legal team.
To do this, LOC conducted workshops with the legal team who owned the process, and the customer-facing onboarding team using it. Through this user research, we identified key areas of confusion, and opportunities for simplification.
LOC’s solution involved a complete overhaul of the onboarding process document. The approach was shifted to be guidance-based, step-by-step walkthrough of the process, rather than a long, rules-based document.
To allow this to work, LOC incorporated user-friendly elements such as decision trees, and illustrative examples, helping to simplify potentially complex concepts like legal entity registration requirements, and jurisdiction-specific constitutional document requirements. To support adherence, phase-by-phase checklists were incorporated into the guidance to nudge users to complete all required steps before proceeding.
LOC also drafted new communications for use by the customer-facing onboarding team. It was aligned fully with the language in the guidance document, and clearly outlined requirements and expectations, to reduce pushback and confusion on the customer side.
Applied to the whole process was the principle that all language and concepts should be explained in the most basic, concise way possible, ensuring new joiners to the bank, and smaller customers without dedicated legal teams, could easily follow the process.
Results and benefits
Even during draft stage, the onboarding team reported the new, guidance-based approach was much easier to use and navigate. They could find relevant information faster, and visual processes helped navigate variable or conditional onboarding requirements. This is expected to result in significantly less queries being escalated to the legal team.
Another benefit of the process was the feedback received (during the workshops) on much broader issues relating to (i) the policies of the institution itself, and (ii) common practices within the wider organisation that contributed to inefficiencies and confusion. Whilst the scope of the issues goes far beyond the legal team’s influence, by flagging the issues with the affected teams, Legal is positioning itself as a leader in continuous improvement, and an enabler to the organisation as a whole.
