Case Study · Coast Capital Savings · 2024
The Mortgage Renewal Tool gave Coast Capital members a self-serve path through their renewal — reducing advisor workload and meeting members where they already were.
Coast Capital's mortgage advisors used an internal tool to manage renewals on behalf of members. We digitized the member-facing intake and decision phase—a clear business opportunity to capture more renewals by letting members move through the process on their own terms. I joined as one of two designers after the principal UX Designer completed discovery, taking ownership from synthesis through handoff.
Manual handling introduced errors that created back-and-forth between members and advisors, slowing renewals unnecessarily. Members had no visibility into process status and couldn't act outside business hours.
With discovery complete, my focus turned to translating those insights into a coherent design direction. I conducted competitive analysis on how other financial institutions handled self-serve renewal flows—rate selection, identity verification, disclosure presentation. Operating with a team of non-digital project managers we found more success in building screens early and worked backwards, letting visualizations surface gaps and drive pace to meet deadlines. Usability testing was conducted with internal staff who held active mortgages up for renewal—a pragmatic workaround given budget constraints—which produced honest gut-check reactions to the design assumptions we were making. The principal designer remained active in design reviews, ensuring continuity between discovery intent and execution.
Design principles
The persistent tension: balancing simplicity with regulatory disclosure requirements. Required legal language risked overwhelming members at the moment they needed to feel confident. Every iteration required negotiating between what compliance needed, what the experience needed to feel manageable, and what felt natural in existing patterns. My co-designer and I worked closely to balance keeping content informative with the overall visual weight of the pages. Stakeholder alignment across product, development, and compliance was ongoing—framing decisions in each audience's language and holding ground on experience quality when it mattered.
The Mortgage Renewal Tool launched in production as Coast Capital's first self-service digital entry point into renewals. Document finalization remains advisor-assisted, with the tool designed as a phase-one foundation for future automation as the platform matures. We structured the project in feature bundles that allowed our team of designers to balance constantly shifting requirements and deliver a product our members would be proud of.