BMO SmartFolio onboarding

Overview:  BMO SmartFolio is a robo investing platform launched quickly by one of Canada’s major banks to gain a competitive advantage. It had a fun approachable voice and was well received in the market. However, as a result of the speed to market there were fall-off points in onboarding that caused both business and user frustration.

User goal: To quickly set up their account with a portfolio suited to them.

Business goal:  Reduce onboarding drop-off and call centre volume from users who lost progress because they didn’t like their assigned portfolio type.

Challenges: Banking is highly-regulated in Canada, and approvals can be slow. I had to make sure I was not violating “know your client” regulations. Due to cresourcing we had to follow an existing template and I was restricted to 4 cards in the onboarding expectations page, but there were 5 points to cover.

Approach: We put the residency requirement in the intro paragraph above the cards. This approach tested well and

Results: A 40% increase in application completions after the expectations page was added, There was significant call centre volume reduction related to automatically assigned portfolios. The calculator created an increase in the number of clients opting for pre-authorized account contributions (PACs), and a higher average PAC.