Fintech / Transaction
Re-Architecting Digital Money Movement for Financial Advisors
Company
LPL Financial
Product
Client Works / Move Money
My Role
End-to-end product design
Overview
Background
Move Money is the most frequently used transaction workflow in LPL Financial's advisor platform—and it was long overdue for a rethink. Inconsistent workflows across transfer types, limited status visibility, and error-prone form logic created friction that eroded advisor confidence over time. The business recognized that addressing the underlying problems required redesigning Move Money as a holistic, unified experience.
My Role
Brought in to lead a high-priority initiative without formal requirements, I defined the problem space through system analysis, advisor feedback, and collaboration with operations, compliance, and back-office teams. I shaped the experience strategy, influenced key product decisions, and partnered across research, engineering, and QA through launch.
Design Strategy
User Research
Heuristic & System Analysis
Interaction & Visual Design
Content Audit
Stakeholder Alignment
QA & Production Sign-off
Company
LPL Financial — the largest independent broker-dealer in the U.S., supporting 29,000+ advisors and $1.9 Trillion in asset under management.
Product
Move Money — transaction tool in ClientWorks, LPL's integrated platform where advisors run their daily activities.
Audience
29K+ financial advisors and their admins, moving money via Check, ACH, and Wire.
Team
Product Manager
Product Owner
Product Design Lead (me)
Principal Designer
Content Strategist
Operations SMEs
Compliance SMEs
3rd-Party Engineering Lead
At a Glance
Challenge
Fragmented workflows across transfer types, inconsistent interactions, and inadequate validation created friction that reduced advisor confidence, increased NIGO requests, and drove operational costs.
Strategy
Redesigned Move Money as a unified end-to-end experience with consistent interaction patterns, intelligent defaults, and proactive validation to simplify workflows and prevent errors.
Impact
Improved completion rates by 60% and user satisfaction by 22%, while reducing errors, support requests, and operational overhead.
* NIGO (Not In Good Order) requests require manual review, increasing operational costs and introducing the risk of delayed transfer execution.
What We Learned

Move Money is primarily used by financial advisors and their administrative staff to execute money transfer requests on behalf of clients. The most common transfers occur between account owners, yet users were unable to save instructions for these recurring transactions, forcing them to re-enter the same information each time. Complex, extraneous content and inadequate form design increased cognitive load and often required users to contact support. When requests resulted in NIGO (Not In Good Order) errors, advisors faced uncertainty around transfer completion, reducing confidence and prompting repeated follow-up until transactions were completed. Ultimately, advisors needed a money transfer experience that was fast, accurate, and dependable—one they could trust with their clients' financial transactions.

Advisors viewed Move Money as one workflow—not separate transaction types.
Recurring account-owner transfers represented the greatest opportunity to reduce repetitive work.
Existing review-stage validation did not catch all errors before requests entered downstream processing.
Root Cause Analysis
Experience
E 01
Content complexity increased cognitive load through excessive pages, inputs, and unnecessary information.
E 02
Transfer experiences remained fragmented across transaction types.
E 03
Validation occurred primarily during review, but did not catch all errors before requests entered downstream processing.
E 04
Users could not save recurring account-owner transfer instructions.
System & Compliance
S 01
Legacy gateway rules frequently generated preventable NIGO requests.
S 02
Ineligible bank instructions were surfaced for wire transfers, creating avoidable user errors.
S 03
Legacy compliance rules prohibited saving account-owner transfer instructions.
S 04
NIGO requests lacked proactive visibility, creating uncertainty around transfer completion.

User research methodoloies used: heuristic and data, data flow analysis, user interviews, review and synthesize over 500 user feedback, user journey

Key Decisions
The data made the direction clear. These decisions translated research insights into scalable product, engineering, and compliance solutions.
Decision Drivers
80-95%
of most common transfers required information can have default values
90%+
of all Move Money request are to/from account owner
~2%
Previous ACH redesign achieved < 2% adoption, reinforcing the need for a unified experience.
92%
of Move Money transfers are ACH — the most common type.
Decision
INsight
IMpact
Decision
Majority Use Case Optimization
Enabled saved instructions for recurring account-owner transfers.
Insight
90%+ of transfers go
to account owner
Impact
Reduced repetitive data entry and accelerated completion for the majority of transactions.
Decision
Upstream Validation
Embedded contextual validation within the workflow to prevent errors before downstream processing.
Insight
Review-stage validation did not catch all errors before downstream processing.
Impact
Reduced errors, rework, and support volume
Decision
Unified Transfer Framework
Standardized ACH, wire, and check into a single interaction framework.
Insight
Inconsistent workflows across transfer types created confusion and slowed task completion
Impact
Improved adoption and reduced tool-switching
Decision
Progressive Simplification
Simplified high-frequency workflows using intelligent defaults and progressive disclosure.
Insight
Excess inputs and unclear requirements increased cognitive load
Impact
Simplified high-frequency transactions while supporting complex scenarios
UX Strategy
How might we help advisors complete money transfers accurately, efficiently, and with confidence?
Unify the Experience
→
Standardize workflows across ACH, Wire, and Check
→
Simplify complexity through progressive disclosure
→
Remove legacy gateway logic
Optimize for the Majority
→
Save instructions for recurring account-owner transfers
→
Optimize input with smart defaults
→
Prioritize high-frequency transfer scenarios
Guide Correct Decisions
→
Surface pending-transaction conflicts before starting a request
→
Verify wire-eligible routing numbers before selection
→
Determine Top Code from payee details
Bringing the Strategy to Life
Principle 01
Replace fragmented workflows with a unified interaction model
Rather than maintaining separate experiences for ACH, Wire, and Check, I designed a unified interaction model that standardized workflow behavior while allowing business rules and complexity to adapt dynamically beneath the surface. This framework scaled across transfer types without exposing implementation complexity to advisors.
Key Shift
From fragmented, transfer-specific workflows to a unified interaction model where the system—not the user—manages complexity.
System Model
Each layer owns one responsibility, so adding a transfer type means extending a layer — not rebuilding a flow.
Wire
ACH
Check
↓
Routing Layer
Determines the processing path from payee type and rules — handling variation without exposing complexity to the user.
↓
Input Layer
Captures transaction details; a streamline through smart defaults for common scenarios.
↓
Validation Layer
Real-time checks for completeness and accuracy — catching issues before submission.
↓
Confirmation Layer
Clear summary and verification before submission — reinforcing confidence in high-stakes actions.
↓
Submit
Interaction Model: All possible paths within the unified framework
How the framework adapts across transfer types and scenarios
The unified framework standardized over 90% of the interaction while allowing transfer-specific behavior to branch only where business rules required.
Saved instruction data
Default value
Required
Optional
Principle 02
Optimize for the majority—reveal complexity only when needed.
More than 90% of Move Money requests followed the same core workflow. Rather than exposing every possible field and scenario upfront, the experience prioritized the most common use cases through saved instructions, intelligent defaults, and progressive disclosure—revealing additional complexity only when required.
Figure 1.  
Legacy account-owner transfers required users to manually enter recurring information for every request.
Figure 2.  
Adaptive transaction flow prioritizing the majority use case through defaults and progressive disclosure.
GUided Flow + Progressive Disclosure
Default Account-Owner Instructions
Automatically selected for the most common transfer scenario.
Smart Defaults
Common values are prepopulated using existing account information.
Edge case required fields
Shown only when applicable
Amount
Only required user input for the majority of transfer requests.
Submit
Default account-owner instructions
Automatically create account-owner instructions using account information already on file.
Default Value Optimization
Prepopulate common values using historical transaction data.
Top Code Automation
Determine the correct Top Code* from payee and payee type.
* Top Code (A–H) categorizes the destination account. Manual selection was the leading source of NIGO errors.
Figure 3.  Default value framework applied consistently across transfer types.
Priciple 03
Eliminate Failure Points
Analysis showed that many NIGO requests were caused not by user mistakes, but by operational rules the system failed to enforce. Rather than asking advisors to understand these hidden constraints, the redesigned experience moved them into the system—eliminating common failure points before requests could be submitted.
The redesigned experience combines familiar interaction patterns with embedded system intelligence, helping advisors complete transfers accurately with minimal effort.
Familiarity
Leverages familiar interaction patterns to reduce learning and increase adoption.
Progressive Guidance
Reveals additional information only when users need it.
Embedded Intelligence
Applies business rules automatically instead of relying on user knowledge.
Progressive Transactions
Default instruction: account owner
can change to new or other saved instructions
New instruction
Real-time validation for bank and address details
Default value entries
80-95% input reductions
Edge case required fields
Shown only when applicable
Amount
Only required input for majority of use cases
Summary
Amount calculations
Net Amount
Submit
Figure 1.  System safeguards eliminate failure paths before requests are created.
Figure 2.  Operational classifications replaced with familiar user decisions.
Users provide familiar information they already know. The system derives the correct operational classification automatically, eliminating the largest source of NIGO requests.
The redesign didn't teach advisors operational rules—it removed the need to understand them. Complexity moved from the interface into the system.
Removed redundancies and reduce complexity from all transaction scenarios to maximize simplicity.
Final Design
A unified interaction model now supports every transfer type, adapting to complexity only when necessary while helping advisors complete transactions accurately, efficiently, and with confidence.
One interaction model. Every transfer type.
Impact

This project began as a redesign of a transfer workflow. It ultimately became the foundation for a unified interaction model that could scale across transfer types while moving operational complexity out of the interface and into the system.

Results reflect the ACH and Check release. Wire launched after the measurement period.

Outcome
Business Impact
+ 60% Task completion
Increased successful transaction conversion
- 20% NIGO errors
Improved conversion quality and reduced failure rates
Reduced support call volume
Lower operational overhead and a more dependable advisor experience.
Key Takeaways

Move Money reinforced several principles that continue to shape how I approach complex enterprise products. Beyond the measurable outcomes, the project reaffirmed the value of questioning assumptions, partnering across disciplines, and grounding product decisions in how people actually work.

The best product ideas are discovered together.

The most valuable design conversations didn't end once requirements were defined. Throughout the project, every constraint became an opportunity to ask, "Why does this exist?" and "Is there another way?" That mindset led to a unified interaction model across transfer types and transformed what initially appeared to be a compliance limitation into one of the product's defining strengths: default account-owner instructions generated from information already on file.

Great enterprise UX is often invisible. Users simply accomplish their task accurately, efficiently, and with confidence because the system quietly carries the complexity for them.

Data should inform product decisions—not make them.

Before the Move Money redesign, the organization invested in a standalone ACH experience because ACH represented more than 90% of transfer volume. Based on the data alone, I likely would have reached the same conclusion. Yet the redesigned ACH experience achieved only about 2% adoption because advisors still relied on the legacy experience for every other transfer type.The experience was a powerful reminder that data is only one part of the story. Understanding users' goals, mental models, and workflows must come before optimizing around metrics. Data tells us where to look. User research tells us what to build.

Next →
From Balance Check to Retirement Strategy