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 used transaction 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 — particularly for smaller firms without the staffing to absorb delays. A previous attempt to modernize the experience with a standalone ACH (the highest-volume transfer type) rebuild fell short — adoption never exceeded 2%, as advisors were unwilling to learn a new system for just one transfer type. The business recognized a partial fix wasn't enough. The entire experience needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.
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
Core Problem
Fragmented workflows across tools limited adoption and failed to address existing user dissatisfactions and NIGO* requests that has high impact on overhead costs.
Approach
Unified the experience into a single system with smart defaults, real-time validation, and a guided flow to reduce user input and prevent errors.
Impact
Improved user satisfaction by 22% and completion rates by 60% while reducing errors and operational overhead.
* NIGO, Not In Good Order errors require a human inventions creating potential risk for request to be delayed, also driving operational cost for the company
What We Learned

To get full picture of what’s happening and what the users were experiencing I led and conducted heuristic and data, data flow analysis, user interviews, review and synthesize over 500 user feedback, user journey and back-office operational story map.

Transfer experiences remained fragmented across tools
Complex and unnecessary content slow the process and confuse the users
High NIGO error volume due to system error and no effective in-line validation
Experience
E 01
Content complexity (4-8 pages), content, order, inputs
E 02
Fragmented experience across transaction type
E 03
No in-line validation, all validation happens at review
E 04
Unable to save instruction to/from account owner
E 05
eSignature document appears on confirmation page
System & Compliance
S 01
Legacy gateway rule leading users to create NIGO* requests
S 02
Present bank instruction that are not wire eligible for wire
S 03
Old compliance logic prohibits save instruction for account owner
S 04
Unexpected NIGO error that causes delay without notice
key data that guided the new design decisions
80-95%
of most common transfers required information can have default values
90%+
of all Move Money request are to/from account owner
~2%
ACH adoption on first rebuild, users refuse to learn new system just for ACH
92%
of Move Money transfers are ACH — the most common type.
Key Decisions
The data made the direction clear. What these decisions represent is how that direction was translated into architectural commitments across compliance, product, and engineering.
Decision
INsight
IMpact
Decision
Majority Use Case Optimization
Save instructions to account owner were not permitted
Insight
90%+ of transfers go
to account owner
Impact
Reduced input and accelerated completion for the majority of transactions
Decision
Upstream Validation
Embedded real-time validation within the flow to catch errors during entry
Insight
NIGO errors were often caused by missing or incorrect inputs identified after submission
Impact
Reduced errors, rework, and support volume
Decision
Unify Transaction System
Standardized ACH, wire, and check into a single transaction framework
Insight
Inconsistent workflows across transfer types created confusion and slowed task completion
Impact
Improved adoption and reduced tool-switching
Decision
Smart Defaults & Progressive Disclosure
Introduced smart defaults and revealed additional fields only when necessary
Insight
Excess inputs and unclear requirements increased cognitive load
Impact
Simplified high-frequency transactions while supporting complex scenarios
UX Strategy
How might we empower our users to create accurate move money request efficiently with confidence?
Refine the workflow
→
Unified flow across ACH, wire, check
→
Progressive disclosure
→
Remove legacy gateway logic
Target what matters
→
Default instruction for account owner
→
Optimize input with smart defaults
→
Top code automation
Close the gap
→
Modernize UI
→
Verify wire eligible routing number
→  GIAC real-time validation
Bringing Strategies to Life
Step 01
Redefine the workflow & transaction behavior to standardized system model
All information presented to users and every required input are organized within the system's layer model, surfaced dynamically through progressive disclosure. The same framework accommodates every transfer type and scenario — from the most common account owner ACH to edge cases requiring additional fields — without exposing that complexity to the user.
Key Shift
‍From fragmented, type-specific flows → to a unified system where complexity is handled by the system, not the user.
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
Saved instruction data
Default value
Required
Optional
Step 02
Target what matters most — default to the majority case, reveal the rest only when needed.
GUided Flow +
Progressive Disclosure
Default Instruction: Account Owner
90% of alll transaction are to account owner
Default value entries
80-95% input reductions
Edge case required fields
Shown only when applicable
Amount
Only required input for majority of use cases
Submit
90%+
All request are to/from account owner
80-95%
required fields can have default values
Default instruction to Account owner
Generate instruction to/from account owner using account owner information on file
Optimize Input with smart defaults
Generate default values using most common scearios based on historical data
Top-Code Automation
Generate top-code* using simple user input (payee + payee type)
* Top code (A-H) is payee categorization for the destination account. Users often get this wrong and it is the highest NIGO error driver.
Step 03
Close the Gap — modernize user experience through design & common modern features.
The new Move Money experience is modeled after a common checkout experience for provides multiple benefits:
Easy to Use
Familiar experience users can easily adopt and use
Transparency
Two column separate progressive views
Clarity
Easily manage transaction rule driven content
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
Net Amount
Amount calculations
Submit
Removed redundancies and reduce complexity from all transaction scenarios to maximize simplicity.
Before & After
One guided flow for every transfer type — smart defaults applied, validation handled inline, and the account-owner case made effortless.
Legacy System
ｘ   Separate tools for ACH, wire, and check
ｘ   4–8 pages of fields with content complexity
ｘ   Validation deferred to the review screen
ｘ   Legacy gateway nudged users into NIGO
→
New Unified system
✓    One guided flow across all transfer types
✓    Smart defaults + progressive disclosure
✓    Real-time validation during entry
✓    Save-to-account-owner as the default
Final Design
Simplicity this clean is designed in — edit by edit, constraint by constraint, until the system carries the complexity so the advisor never has to.
Results & Impact

The redesign didn't just modernize an interface — it restored something the legacy experience had quietly eroded: advisor confidence in the platform. Transfers that once required manual follow-up, workarounds, and phone calls to confirm completion could now be executed independently, accurately, and in significantly less time. For advisors managing transfers on behalf of clients, that shift wasn't just operational — it was professional. The platform was finally doing its job so they didn't have to do it for them.

The following results reflect the ACH and Check release. Wire had not yet launched at the time of measurement.

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 friction and improved user confidence
Key Takeaways

Move Money exposed how easily organizations can optimize for the wrong signal. The business initially focused on ACH because it represented the majority of transfers, but advisors rejected the standalone solution since they still needed the legacy system for wires and checks. The metric was right, but the conclusion was wrong. Instead, we focused on what the data actually revealed: 90% of transfers went to account owners, which led us to streamline the primary workflow, unlock saved instructions through compliance partnership, and reduce the experience to the fewest possible inputs.

The project also exposed how averages can hide reality. Initial data suggested advisors had 10–12 saved instructions on average, but most actually had only 1–3, while a small group had more than 50. Designing for the “average” would have optimized for almost no one. Challenging those assumptions helped shape a more scalable experience for the highest-volume transaction workflow at LPL Financial, balancing usability, compliance, and operational reliability in a high-trust financial environment.

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From Balance Check to Retirement Strategy