Optimizing LendingClub’s online banking with AI Assistance
Timeline
August- December 2024 (Industry Sponsered Project)
Team
Vibha Maheshwari, Theresa Antony, Bon Bhakdibhoomi, William Downs
Overview
Role
Lead UX Designer, Lead UX Researcher, Prototyper
Mentors
Sally Xia, Eilish McVey, Dr. Carrie Bruce
As larger institutional banks rapidly integrate AI driven chabots and virtual intelligence into thier mobile banking experience, LendingClub must adapt to stay competitive and better support its target audience, many of whom lack access to clear, actionable financial insights to make informed online banking decisions.
PROBLEM OVERVIEW
As banks increasingly adopt AI to optimize digital banking, LendingClub faces the challenge of integrating AI across its lending, banking, and investing services without increasing cognitive load. And while AI can enable capabilities such as fraud detection, risk monitoring, and personalized insights, its value addition depends on a focused, transparent application within a unified platform.
Suggested Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Online Banking Platforms and Example Use Cases
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might LendingClub strategically integrate AI into its digital banking experience to improve efficiency and decision-making while preserving clarity, user trust, and control?
CURRENT SOLUTION
While LendingClub provides a unified platform for banking, lending, and credit products- it lacks an organized IA for developing AI features within the app’s core experience.
TARGET AUDIENCE
LendingClub aims to expand its appeal to younger, digitally native users by incorporating AI-driven features that make banking more responsive to users’ financial needs.
Thus, we asked ourselves the question,
An interactive AI assistant that acts as a personalized financial advisor, analyzing your spending habits to suggest actions to reach out financial goals, through a seemless integration as an LLM Chatbot and data visualization tool in LendingClub’s DebtIQ portal.
Personalized Data Usage Opt-In during Onboarding
Design Rationale: Data Transparency & Trust
In the onboarding experience, the user is prompted about where their data is stored and lets them choose what data to share with the AI chatbot.
The biggest insights we got from our users was that they wanted transparency for where their data is going when using AI products.
Some examples of data you can share are your bank account information, frequent expenses like rent, utilities or other bills, and also credit card information.
Debt IQ: AI-Powered Analytics & Goal Tracking
Design Rationale: Growth & Personalization
Interactive Chatbot as a Financial Advisor
Design Rationale: Financial Control & Risk
The ClubAI chatbot interface helps users get financial advice, analyze their financial data, and also get their banking information, like their monthly transaction history.
The chatbot also helps setting financial goals in order to reach targets, as well as invenstment offers based on user’s banking habits.
For each answer or advise, ClubAI also gives the source that it’s referring to, for proof of all the resources it uses to advise.
With the financial visualization and analysis within DebtIQ, users can get statistical insights on thier daily and monthy spending habits and how far thie are from their goals.
Users are also prompted to review their financial progression based on catergies such as food, transport, travel etc. in orde to repriortize their spending in each area.
Users also see insights about their credit score. This feature is an extension of the current Debt IQ, which adds AI powered smart assistance to maintain and improve your credit score.
User Research Activities
Discovering Key Insights through six core UX Research Practices & Methodologies
We employed a six-pronged research approach, beginning with secondary resources like literature reviews and market research, and advancing to primary research methods such as surveys, focus groups and semi-structured interviews.
From August to mid-September, we conducted affinity mapping, competitive analysis, and app walkthroughs as well as several contextual inquiries. This rigorous analysis revealed friction points in task flows and critical breakpoints in the LendingClub app's current user interface, laying the foundation for our ideation and wireframing activities.
To explore the intricacies of our problem space, we deployed a diverse array of research methods to capture qualitative and quantitative insights. Our goal was to uncover our target users' painpoints in banking experiences as well as assess the relevance of AI in assisting/enhancing financial services.
By engaging with users and Fintech experts within the LendingClub Ecosystem, we uncovered valuable insights that shaped our design approach and informed our design making, ensuring a user-centered design direction.
Broader Demographic Insights
Categorizing our User Base: Early AI Adopters to Laggards
Satisfaction Rates with Online Banking
How comfortable are you in using AI in Banking?
After conducting initial user surveys, we discovered that about 58% of our target audience were satisfied with their current banking experience, with almost half of our demographic being millennials, closely followed by Gen-Z and Gen-X. Most were comfortable with using AI to receive alerts about uponing transactions and suspicious activity, however were less likely to rely on AI for applying loans and transferring funds.
Gen-Z were 63% more open to gaining financial advice and monitoring their credit score with AI as compared to Gen-X, Millenials and Baby Boomers. So, to gain deeper insights into key concerns with use of AI in banking we subdivided our user group into two audiences due to their varying needs: the older, more experienced banking customers—often the laggards in using AI— versus the younger, tech-savvy users that LendingClub wanted to attract— early adopters of AI but less familiar with its use in banking.
Affinity Mapping our Interview Data
Demographics: Customer Discovery
Banking tasks in which users are comfortable using AI
Key Research Insights
Online Banking should be seamless, transparent and insightful: I want AI to improve my financial knowledge
“AI should be more than an assistant, it should be a guide”- Wants to understand transaction flows, categorize their spending and have a tailored banking experience.
“I want to find out more about using competitive financial products”- Wants to enhance their Fintech knowledge and experience through artificial intelligence features.
“I want personal control over the blockchain level of my personal assets” - Wants to have administrative control over thier accounts, so Ai-driven decisions can be overrided and revoked within a grace period.
AI Features should be tailored around my personal financial story, and should be genuinely helpful
“AI should be genuinely helpful and insightful”- Chatbots should give customers want they are looking for, or point them in the right direction, instead of being generic and providing standardised, one-size-fits-all solutions.
“I lack awareness of what AI features exist in banking”- Wants to have visible AI features across the app, that can be found without effort, as well as regular updates into AI development, and ways that it can assist.
“AI should help mainly with low-stakes tasks” - Only wants AI for low-stakes task and repetitive, time consuming work.
Competitive Benchmarking & Defining Success Metricss
Strengths, Weaknesses, and Usability Rating of AI features across Competitors in the Market
App Walkthrough
How Competitors leverage AI in Banking and their System Usability Scores (SUS):
Bank of America: (3.8/5) Erica assists users through personalized wealth management insights, transaction categorization and budgeting support. However, Erica does not help with details like Routing Number, IBAN Number and Swiftcodes which are hard to find within the app.
SoFi: (4.2/5) Virtual Assitant provides information on all Sofi’s Products, easy navigation and discovery of credit and loan offers, and has a customized feed of articles for financial tips. However, the UI is not customizable and dark-mode friendly.
Chime: (3.6/5) Chimebot assists in fraud detection and
Ally Bank: (3.8/5)
Capital One (4.3/5)
Defining Success Metrics:
Engagement with Chatbot
Helped analyze the percentage of users with 1+ chatbot sessions per banking app usage and how many actually achieved the goals assigned to the chatbot. This also showed us how often users were engaging at length with the Chatbot.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Helped us understand how likely users are going to recommend the app and AI features to others after using it. This also revealed patterns of trust on the AI features as compared to the overall brand loyalty toward the Lending Club product.
Addressing Friction, Painpoints, Redundancy, Inconsistency in Current App’s User Interface
Key User Findings → Next Steps
Walking through each app screen helped us identify breakpoints in taskflow, inconsistencies across user interface that did not aline with Nielson’s heuristics of general principles of designing interfaces.
Using the speak-out-loud method, we worked with users to discover user frustrations across various screens, buttons and layouts in LendingClub’s banking app which needed to be redesigned with the addition of AI in order to maintain clarity, simplicity and user satisfaction in the new UI. Key issues observed were increased clutter, duplicate linking, and navigational fatigue.
Time for Completion
Captures how long it takes users to complete a banking task, comparing AI-guided vs standard flows. Ideally AI should speed users to reach clarity and finish key lending tasks. Shorter times illustrate reduced friction and more confident decision-making.
Hierachical Flow → Increased Cognitive Friction
Increased Information overload from 3 core services in one app, requiring simplification of main navigation and labelling key tasks by outcomes instead of services.
Sequential Navigation → Excessive Pagination
Multiple redundancies and page breaks due to buried content and looped pathways, increasing bounce rate and requiring more than 5 click navigation to reach results.
Lateral Navigation → Limited Hierarchy Visibility
Navigational Decay due to increased horizontal tabs by addition of AI, requiring proper nesting to be a seamless addition within core services.
Suggested Hierarchical Improvements
Overcrowded Interface by adding AI in Home Page
LendingClub App’s interface is already crowded with lending, banking and credit services. Addition of AI could overwhelm the user and increase cognitive load
Accuracy & Reliability Concerns on Financial AI
“What if AI makes a mistake with my money?” Fear of transactional errors due to system failure that could incur costs and overall dependence on AI for financial advice
Instant Manual Override & Asset Lock Protection
Key Observations:
Excessive Horizontal Pagination due to seperation between core features like banking, lending and DebtIQ, leading to page breakdowns and recursve looping → Create linkage between each horizontal tab and simplify tab-switching.
Inconsistency in navigation menu and repetitive features across tabs, leads to inefficient navigation and broken user flow, making users misinterpret function differences → Requires clear linkage between each tab, to increase discoverability of LC’s products and reduce ambiguity.
Fear of Losing Autonomy and Control over Assets
Worries that AI recommendations are not in the best interest of the user, and purposely designed to maximize bank profits, and lack of autonomy in adopting to new feature updates
Analyzing User Frustrations
Addressing Barriers, Negative Feedback, User Concerns in using AI for Financial Guidance
Target User Group A: Baby Boomers & Gen-X
Difficulty in understanding how AI works in banking
Hard to find where AI is located in the app, and keeping up with updates with a complicated interface can be a significant learning curve for the older customers
Target User Group B: Millennials & Gen-Z
Knowledge Gap about using AI to Grow Wealth
Valuble features like spend analysis, savings optimization & investment insights are deployed but not translated into wealth-building benefits for customers
Personalized Investment Strategies for your portfolio
Distrust about privacy with AI during banking tasks
Unsure of measures to take if their data gets compromised while using AI and how to protect their financial privacy from being invaded in case of malpractice
Use Layered Disclosures & Clear Privacy Policies
Transparent AI Reasoning & Granular User Opt-Ins
Create obvious affordances to showcase AI
Key TakeAways → Next Steps
Current Information Architecture
Reduce Visual Noise & Use Simple Iconography
Design Insights from User Research Methods
Turning User Discovery Insights into Design Implications and System Requirements
SOLUTION INTEGRATION
Integrating MVP into LendingClub’s Ecosystem
Developing User Personas
Ideation & Sketching Activities
Crazy Eights Brainstorming and Sketch Analysis for Club AI’s Feature Roadmap
Prototyping & Execution
Wireframing ClubAI Chatbot UI: Low- Fidelity Mockups
Rendering High Fidelity Mockups & Design Usage Goals
UX Evaluation, Usability Testing & SUS Questionnaire
CONCEPTUAL MAPPING & ADDRESSING BREAKPOINTS
Integrating Research Insights to Redesign LendingClub App’s Information Architecture
Intelligent Financial Guidance.
Build for you. Around you.
Get intelligent help managing everything from daily spending to long-term financial goals. ClubAI connects the dots across your LendingClub experience—your loans, transactions, budgets, and aspirations—and learns from your interactions to provide advice that's truly yours.
ClubAI doesn't just tell you—it shows you. Dynamic visualizations break down complex financial information into clear, interactive charts that help you understand where your money goes and how small changes compound over time.
A Dedicated Advisor. Indebted to you.
Simply ask ClubAI questions in natural language: "How can I pay off my credit card faster?" or "Where am I overspending this month?" ClubAI analyzes your actual financial data to provide personalized, actionable recommendations as a personal consultant, sitting right next to you.
Intelligent Financial Guidance.
Build for you. Around you.
Get intelligent help managing everything from daily spending to long-term financial goals. ClubAI connects the dots across your LendingClub experience—your loans, transactions, budgets, and aspirations—and learns from your interactions to provide advice that's truly yours.
A Dedicated Advisor. Indebted to you.
Simply ask ClubAI questions in natural language: "How can I pay off my credit card faster?" or "Where am I overspending this month?" ClubAI analyzes your actual financial data to provide personalized, actionable recommendations as a personal consultant, sitting right next to you.
ClubAI doesn't just tell you—it shows you. Dynamic visualizations break down complex financial information into clear, interactive charts that help you understand where your money goes and how small changes compound over time.
See your projected debt-free date shift as you adjust payment amounts, or visualize how cutting specific expenses accelerates your goals.
See your projected debt-free date shift as you adjust payment amounts, or visualize how cutting specific expenses accelerates your goals.
Frequently Asked Questions
