Helping families invest in a child's future.
Canada Life | Product design
In every family around the world one of the biggest milestones is the birth of a child. For many, securing their child's future is of utmost importance and what better way to do that than investing in their education? At Canada Life, I had the unique opportunity to design the first digital Registered Educational Savings Plan (RESP) that was released in the group customer market.
Canada Life is one of the largest financial providers focusing on insurance and wealth management in Canada.
My role: Lead UX Designer
User research and strategy
Market research and competitor analysis
Facilitating workshops and design reviews with key stakeholders
Pitching concepts and features to product owners
Lo-fi/Hi-fi designs
UX writing
Usability testing
Project timeline: 2020 Feb - 2020 Aug
What's an RESP?
An RESP or Registered Education Savings Plan is an investment vehicle that a parent or guardian can set up for a child’s education. Although it’s called a savings plan, the contributions are invested in a variety of different funds (mutual funds, stocks, bonds etc.) depending on the parent’s risk tolerance. Their contributions also grow tax-free and will be eligible for a range of federal and provincial grants.
RESPs today are set up mostly through an advisor filling out many forms depending on the number of children and legal guardians in the plan and if they choose to apply for government grants.
What makes this RESP product stand out?
Payroll deductions
Users can enable automatic payments from their payroll directly into their RESP account.
Employer matching
Your employer (based on their benefit offerings) can match your contributions to grow your RESP faster.
Low management fees
Most financial institutions will take a management fee for their products (usually around 2-3%) which can be large sum of money that could otherwise stay in your investment. Canada life is keeping these fees low under 1-1.5% for RESPs.
Easily apply for government grants
Applying for government grants is usually a separate set of forms and process in Canada. Through Canada Life, you'll be able to select the grants that you are eligible for and apply for them in one step along with your enrolment in the RESP.
Product goals
Design a Group RESP product that motivates non-RESP users to adopt it, and RESP-users to transfer their accounts.
Maintain a long-term relationship with group customers without being tied to a plan sponsor or employer
Attract new customers to Canada life products by allowing family members of plan members to apply and set up an account
Be the first in the group marketplace ($51B market in which insurance only has 5% of) to launch an RESP product
Getting to know our users
As a person with no children it's hard for me to understand the thought that goes into planning a child's future. I could only vaguely draw from my experience of withdrawing from the RESP my parents set up for me before I went off to university. It was a lot of paperwork.
We knew an RESP is a complex investment with many parents not knowing how well they can grow an RESP investment in time for their children to make use of it. We also knew that competitor products (from other financial institutions) were not great at providing users with this information with very few RESP calculators in the market.
In order to design a strong product that meets our goals, I needed to understand the pressing concerns coming from parents who are starting to think about opening an RESP for their child or already have one. I started by leveraging some of the existing customer research as well as conducting a few interviews of my own.
Major insights from UX discovery
We interviewed 9 existing customers, 7 plan sponsors, 7 customer support representatives and leveraged insights from 2 focus groups.
Users did not know if they were effectively contributing to their RESP
Many parents would start an RESP for their child but have a 'set it and forget it' attitude about it. There was a general lack of awareness around how they can maximize their contributions to take advantage of government grants (free money)
Many parents do not factor in educational inflation - increased tuition costs
The cost of tuition today is not what it was 10 years ago and this cost won't stay the same in another 10 years. Many parents don't account for this inflation in tuition, cost of living, textbooks etc.
Not aware of fees involved
Since an RESP is a savings account that is invested in different stocks managed by a financial institution, many parents were not aware of the fees these institutions charge (typically called management expense ratio). They were even disappointed that a percentage of their savings for their child would be taken for these fees.
Overly complex terminology
Primary caregiver, custodial parent, beneficiary....An RESP product contains many terms that are difficult for an average financially literate person to understand. We found that even advisors had trouble recalling what some of the terms meant on the paper forms.
Too much paperwork
The current process to open an RESP involved 12 or more pages of forms depending on the people involved in the account. Parents found this process to be very overwhelming to complete and coordinate with their spouse or other family member. Many clients would contact an advisor to help them fill it out.
Complex relationships involved in an RESP product
This was a learning that surprise me, I didn't factor in how complex family relationships could affect the decisions around an RESP. For example, think of single parent families that have share custody of a child or blende families that have to be more cautious about how these decisions can negatively impact their relationships. It's important that we factor in the many different decision makers there could be in a child's life.
"I was excited to set it up...(but) then I was confused. It was a lot of overload of information. It needed to be simplified."
Research participant
High level journey
Based on the user research findings, working closely with the product owner and understanding the technology limitations from our stakeholders I was able to map out the ideal high level user journey.
The user's journey would start once they log into their Group Retirement Services (GRS) portal, which is where they manage all of their investment products such as an RRSP, RPP, TFSA etc.
How can we make the experience feel seamless across 3 different platforms?
Because this was a pilot product, the application itself would be built on a content management system outside of GRS to speed up development. GRS would connect with the CMS (Adobe Experience Manager) to pass user info. At the end of the application process, the user would be taken to another third party platform called DocuSign to provide their electronic signature. I also had to think about how the e-signature technology, DocuSign would fit into this experience as this was the first time it was being implemented in the company. I had to work within the constraints of these 3 systems, across 3 different development teams to craft a seamless user experience.
How do we encourage parents to invest in their first RESP and existing customers to transfer their current RESP?
In tandem with the user journey I also needed to think about what key features or strategy will eliminate the pain points.
Fewer steps
The current process for RESPs are long, containing many steps and many forms. Simplifying and reducing the steps would allow parents to easily set one up with Canada Life. I was able to reduce the process from 12 to 7 steps.
Autosave and resume
During the research process we found that many people can be involved in the planning of a child's RESP. A lot of information will be needed from the parties involved as well where the user or applicant may need to step away from the application and come back at a later time. We needed to build an autosave feature that would save the user's progress and let them come back to it later.
Educational content
It's important that we try to educate users about how an RESP works and provide transparency so they are comfortable investing in our product. We knew from the research that users had many questions that needed to be answered from fees to other uses for the account.
No insurance jargon
Traditional insurance companies are known to use complex terminology that's difficult for the general public to understand especially when most people may not be as financially literate. Talking to some of our customer support reps we found that even advisors struggle with certain terms on the forms and they have to check their knowledge base quite often. We simplified the following terms in the application; primary caregiver = legal guardian, co-subscriber = spouse, beneficiary = child/student.
Leverage DocuSign
With an application like an RESP where multiple parties will be involved in the signing procedure, we had to ensure that the electronic signing experience will be as smooth as possible. This was Canada Life's first time adopting DocuSign and this experience had to pave the way for the experience.
RESP product page
An RESP product is complex and we know most parents don't know where to start. When a user logs into GRS we needed to notify them that this product is available and provide them with the most pertinent information about this product.
In collaboration with the UX writer, we structured this page in a way that answers the most pressing questions from parents and highlights the major features and advantages without any insurance jargon:
1. What is an RESP product?
2. What are the main features?
3. Why should I start one with Canada Life?
4. What types of RESP plans are there?
5. How does it work?
6. How to maximize your contributions?
7. FAQs
Starting with the basics
A typical RESP paper application has many nuances that need to be taken into account to set up the right type of account. In close collaboration with the business analyst in this project, I identified the key questions we needed to ask to define the right framework for the RESP account. Users would start by answering 3 main questions, each choice would reveal more information that would be important for a parent to know about their decisions especially when it comes to some of the constraints of the product.
Data that can't be passed
The biggest setback we had was the back end system did not have the capability to let users edit or update their personal information that was being passed from GRS to the application. This system was too old and would require significant development work to solve this issue. I had to make sure that the user's information would be displayed as the first step in the flow so that they have the chance to check if it's outdated before getting into the application. This step also includes the customer service phone number they could call to update their information if need be.
Building the structure of the application
The three questions answered in the previous step set up the overall structure of the application where the user would complete the details of the child, other parent or guardian and/or spouse.
Child or beneficiary details
One of the first steps in the flow where the user has to provide the child's personal details such as age, SIN and their relationship to the user. Depending on the type of RESP plan chosen, the user can add 1 or more children/beneficiaries.
RESP allocation
If the user added more than one child in the previous step they would have to indicate how the RESP funds should be allocated to each child. They of course have the ability to edit this at a later time. Logic is added to these input fields suggesting an allocation amount based on the child's age and how close they are to post secondary education would be beneficial to users.
Spouse's details
This is a conditional step based on whether the user chose to include their spouse in this application back in 'Tell us the basics'. The main decision that was important to highlight here was letting the user know they can specify whether or not their spouse has the power to change the withdrawal instructions.
Legal guardian
A huge point of confusion was the differences in definition between custodial parent and primary caregiver in government applications. You would think these two things are the same right? Almost all of our users thought the same as well so we had to be careful about the wording we chose. We really only needed the information of the parent the child lives with so we designed two checks for that - once when we ask for the child's residential address and a second time when we ask for the primary caregiver's details.
Government grants
One of the final steps in the flow was opting in for government grants. Many grants are available for parents across Canada but they may not be eligible for them all. We wanted to make it easier by displaying only the federal and provincial grants they are eligible for based on the information provided in the application.
Leveraging and contributing to our growing design system
An advantage we had in order to speed up development was leveraging the components we had built for our growing design system. I was able to use components in my designs that have been researched, tested and vetted by our design system team, saving so much time and effort.
I was also able to contribute to the design system for components we did not have but needed for the RESP experience such as a file upload component. I also used the RESP experience to put together the guidelines and patterns for the electronic signature experience - a first for the company.
Usability testing with potential applicants
I planned and launched moderated usability tests, using a functional prototype with 8 potential customers - those who are looking to open an RESP for a loved one.
Users gave an average rating of 6 out of 7 for ease of use
Majority of users we tested the experience with found that the format of the questions was easy to understand. They liked the simple language and reduction of insurance jargon. They also felt that they had learned new information about the RESP product after going through the experience.
Lack of understanding that this is an investment account
Consistent with our initial research, we found that majority of users were not financially literate and did not understand that the RESP account is an investment account. Even though we had this information on our product page, only 2 out of the 8 users were able to explain that the funds can be invested in various stocks and bonds.
Users like simple graphics to support explanations
Users appreciate the graphics we included alongside the content which helped them easily understand how to take advantage of government grants to speed up the growth of their RESP funds.
Users don't read the member booklet
A business requirement we had to incorporate was including a 50 page member booklet that goes into detail about all the features, rules and limitations of this product. This requirement was driven mainly by legal and compliance where they wanted to place this pdf file on not only the product page but also at the start and end of the application. We felt that this was overkill and no parent has the time to read through 50 pages of content so this finding validated our assumptions.
Defining metrics for future improvements
Before launching this product, I worked closely with our analytics team to set up a UX dashboard (on Adobe Analytics) monitoring key metrics that we'll be able to use to assess how well the experience is doing. I wanted to measure conversion rates, drop-offs at every page, the user's journey and the number of sessions they took to complete an application, device usage, incomplete applications etc. One downside to this project was the lack of strong KPIs to know that this product is a success, so I had to compare against other benchmarks and key metrics.
Introducing RESP calculators
The usability test showed us that the content was not enough to help users understand that an RESP is an investment product. Also, because this is a fairly new product for the company we needed to clearly show the incentives rather than just telling them. This would also be a convincing factor for users to transfer existing RESPs they may have started with another institution. A solution that may potentially solve these issues is an RESP calculator. Many of our competitors had RESP calculators or dynamic infographics that allow users to play around with a contribution amount and watch their RESP grow over the span of 15-20 years.
What information will give parents the foresight to plan their RESP well?
Through competitor analysis and running another batch of usability tests on 3 competitor products (SunLife, GetSmarteAboutMoney and CST Spark), I was able to propose valuable features for an RESP calculator we could build for our experience post MVP.
Cost of tuition
The main objective is that parents understand their savings target aka the full cost of their child's tuition. As a bonus they also need to know how much money they need to factor in for inflation.
Minimum contribution amount
Putting aside a large sum of money may be difficult for many parents especially with other expenses to pay off first. It's important that parents understand the minimum amount they should contribute to their RESP on a monthly or yearly basis.
Contribution from grants
Parents currently find it difficult to understand how much money they can receive from government grants and how that number can change based on their income, contribution and the age of their child. Surfacing this information upfront through visuals and allowing parents to see how that number changes with the contribution amount will be of high value.
Rate of return
A question that came up in both usability tests was around wanting to know the rate of return of an RESP. This number isn't given up front because the user could be put in a variety of investment funds with different rates of return based on the age of their child and investment risk. Based on the need, my proposal was to use an average or base rate of return in the calculations.
Dynamic results
Given all the variables above, most users found it easier to interpret the results from an RESP calculator using a graph or infographic that allows them to make changes to those variables and see how it affects the growth of their RESP.
Impact :)
This product was launched to Walmart, Best Buy and Canada Life employees and achieved a 32% conversion rate in a span of 6 months.
Work is currently in progress to allow users to transfer existing RESPs online among other features.
The calculator or an 'investment profile quiz' is being developed within GRS, the customer portal where members go to manage their savings, contributions and benefits.