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Financial Services

Arekera AI Inc. and

Goldman Sachs Liquidity Management

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Arkera AI Case Study

FinTech Case Study #1: Atlas Product Suite - using AI to present financial news to 

My Role @ Arkera

Lead UX Designer

In a startup with only 30-40 people, I was the Lead UX Designer, with another junior UX Designer. I was responsible for vision, process and overseeing designs as well as hands on designing all the products there.

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Problem Space

  1. Arkera’s users are at a competitive disadvantage due to information asymmetry with on-the-ground market participants in Emerging Markets (e.g., Turkey, Egypt, Mexico)


     

  2. These on-the-ground market participants will consume news in their local language and will know of potentially market moving changes faster than UK/US counterparts

Research 

Over came challenges of busy users by: 

  1. Building relationships and finding right partners

  2. Needed more effort to prepare and plan for an effective UX Interviews, focusing on objectives and getting the right questions

  3. Relied more on Subject Expert reviews

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Experience Maps

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Mapping the objectives, features, actions, emotions and challenges through our customer lifecyle

Iterative Design

Continuously refining from lofi to hifi

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In Conclusion:

Commercial success leading to Startup Exit -bought out by private investors

  • Provide money making opportunities for users

  • Product with global outreach - US/Europe

  • Delivered Search Engine MVP + add ons

  • Sign-up from our target user group of EM participants

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Goldman Sachs Case Study

FinTech Case Study #2: Liquidity Management Operations - Multi billion dollar problem

My Role @ 
Goldman Sachs

As a Goldman Sachs Tech Lead ...

For the last 7 years there, I was equal parts UX Designer, Tech Architect and Developer. I chose to follow a strict Design Process to design the Product, which is a process I still adhere to today.

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Problem Space

1. Complex operational process for real-time monitoring of bank account balances in over 80 currencies with up to 6 billion USD worth of cash and security transactions per day. Which was crux of liquidity crisis issues back in 2008



2. At end of day, bank balances must be within acceptable thresholds (not too long nor too short of cash) in order to maximise investment opportunities. 



3. Managers and front line operations have different objectives and day to day roles that are often time consuming.

User Personas Summary

Sarah (VP of Liquidity Ops)

  • Macro level risk-management

  • Oversees and approves analysts

  • Point of escalation and accountability

Jack (Analyst in Liquidity Ops)

  • Micro level risk-management

  • Executes day to day tasklist

  • Monitors and escalates any exceptions

Broker

Contextual Interviews

During our Research phase of the project, we conducted a series of contextual interviews where we sat 'over the shoulder' or had screen shares, observing our users executing their day to day work. This was followed up with extensive Q&A to understand emotional status of each task.

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Note: image is reenactment as in-office photography was strictly not allowed.

Wireframes to Mockups

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Co-Design wireframe is then mocked-up with a Shared Library

Liquidity Managment Tool

Built and Launched back in 2015

Conclusion:

Achieved the commercial and emotional objectives

Outcome:

  • Reduced manual tasks (approx 900 mins/day saved)

  • Users had more time to focus on clients

  • Better client service = increase in revenues

  • Reduced human errors (less fines/overdraft)

  • Product successfully launched globally (more than 150 users)

  • Much improved mood and team spirit of the Ops team

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