Lending Onboarding — NerdWallet Small Business
Fundera by NerdWallet matches self-employed business owners with lending offers through a four-step onboarding flow — Credit Authorization, About You, Business Basics, and Bank Statements. Because the flow asks for sensitive information (SSN, home address, bank statements) before a user has built any trust in the product, drop-off was concentrated right where that information is requested. I led a mixed-methods research study to pinpoint exactly where and why users hesitated, then redesigned the flow and the new Business Hub dashboard around those findings.
Objective
Identify the friction points driving drop-off in the Lending onboarding, focusing on user comfort, trust, and ease around sensitive information requests.
Role
Senior Product Designer — UX Research & Redesign Lead
Timeline
Research: April 2026 · Redesign shipped Q2 2026
Core Responsibilities
User research, usability testing, product design, data analysis, prototyping, stakeholder collaboration
How I got here
I audited the four onboarding screens against the live conversion funnel to form hypotheses, ran an unmoderated usability study to test comfort, trust, and ease at each step, synthesized the findings into a short list of opportunities, then redesigned and shipped the flow across desktop and mobile — validating impact against the same funnel I started with.
Where AI fit into the process
I built an HTML/CSS reference of NerdWallet's design system specifically so AI tools could generate on-brand, production-accurate prototypes instead of generic UI. Using Cursor and Claude, I prototyped the redesigned flow directly in code, testing interactions, states, and edge cases before engineering handoff, which caught issues static mockups would have missed. AI also accelerated the synthesis of 50 usability-study transcripts into the opportunity list below; every finding was verified against the raw sessions and the analytics funnel before making the cut.
Where users actually dropped off
I reviewed the onboarding flow screen by screen, then ran an unmoderated usability test with 50 self-employed participants to measure comfort, trust, and perceived ease at each step, cross-referencing the qualitative findings against the live product-analytics funnel.
(Questionnaire Completed → Completes Form, 705 of 2,456 users)
What we heard from users
Comfort and trust tracked closely with how sensitive the ask felt and how little the page explained why it was needed — the SSN and bank-connection screens were the clear low points.
What the research told us to fix
- Enhance the visual design across all four screens to read as more credible and less "hacked together."
- Add clear security and data-handling messaging directly next to the SSN field.
- Introduce Plaid with a short, plain-language explanation of what it is, who uses it, and how it protects user data.
- Add a clickable link to the full service agreement on the Credit Authorization screen.
- Replace technical security language ("256-bit security") with concrete, plain statements non-technical users find credible.
- Tell users upfront that they'll need their Federal Tax ID, so they can have it ready before starting.
- Add a short note explaining that information is only used to find suitable lending options — never stored or sold.
- Surface trust signals (rating, security credentials) prominently, not just buried in the footer.