Structured Note Exchange
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Structured Note Exchange
Role
Product Designer
Domain
Trade Execution
Timeframe
2024-Ongoing
Tools
User Interviews, Figma, Miro, Material UI, MUI Data Grid, MetaBase
A comprehensive trading platform designed to handle billions of trading volume for Structured Notes, catering to Advisors and Chief Investment Officers for purchasing, while enabling Issuers to manage orders and Trade Desks to efficiently execute transactions with Custodian desks.
Context
Context
A disjointed, manual chain of handoffs in desperate need of a unified system to scale.
Structured Notes are customized investment products used by financial advisors to help clients manage risk and pursue returns. Despite $194 Billion in 2024 U.S. issuance, the process of executing trades remains outdated. Each trade involves a cross-company chain of emails, spreadsheets, and siloed tools.
Purchasing a Structured Note touches multiple players from when an Advisor places a buy order through to the final execution. Issuers, Trade Desks, and Broker-Dealers all need better visibility and control across the execution process. On top of that complexity, there are 3 unique ways to purchase a Note that each have their own processes and challenges: Calendars, Auctions, and Secondaries.
As a Lead UI/UX designer, I tackled the daunting challenge of standardizing all trade management for multiple users and order types into one, unified interface, with scalability for Halo in mind.
I don’t even know what we’re losing or why — I just send quotes into the void.`
Issuing Banks
Goal: Insight into Win/Loss Performance
I just need one single place to manage all orders and clients. No more spreadsheet juggling and guessing at account statuses.
Trade Desk Operations
Goal: Centralize trade complexity
I need to know what the business is going to look like tomorrow — can I give my staff the day off?
Broker-Dealers
Goal: Oversight and forecasting
Research
Research
Insight 1: Business risk
Initial interviews with Halo’s Trade Desk made it clear this wasn’t just a QOL project: it was posing a business risk.
The Halo Trade Desk were great, accessible SMEs to help kick this process off. To garner an initial understanding of the processes, we conducted several knowledge sharing and brainstorming sessions with them to discover their existing paint points, workarounds, and systems. It was eye-opening to delve into the web of spreadsheets and see how truly manual this process still was.
Design questions
How do we automate account status tracking to prevent same-day scrambling to open a bunch of new clearing accounts?
How do we prioritize the most urgent orders for the user?
An example of a Spreadsheet tracking millions of dollars in orders.
I don’t even know what we’re losing or why — I just send quotes into the void.`
Issuing Banks
Goal: Insight into Win/Loss Performance
I just need one single place to manage all orders and clients. No more spreadsheet juggling and guessing at account statuses.
Trade Desk Operations
Goal: Centralize trade complexity
I left the office not realizing there were unfilled orders remaining.
Broker-Dealers
Goal: Oversight and forecasting
These are real screens from the same platform that each offer a subset of trading features. And even with this miss-match of screens, users were still tracking substantial information in offline spreadsheets.
Insight 2: existing ux debt needs to go
Analyzing the existing solutions, we found fragmentation and inconsistencies.
Between boutique client implementations, older legacy systems trying to address individual order types, and simply broken screens there was a lot to learn from. Talking to trade desks and finding the disconnects was paramount in figuring out how to solve this problem.
Design questions
Can we unite and prioritize the different types of orders?
How do we show the right amount of information without overwhelming?
Insight 3: Issuers are key for scalability
Issuers need insights & data to drive adoption.
Issuing banks can be slow to change and adopt new technology. In order to enable automation, we need them to use our system rather than replying by email. When speaking to Issuers, they cared most about seeing their performance for certain Note Types and features. Providing unprecedented access to these insights would be pivotal to drive platform adoption.
Design questions
How do we make it more compelling to log in and submit a bid rather than just replying to an email?
How do we surface key data points without overwhelming users with information?
Where do we keep careful record-keeping for compliance and FINRA audits?
An example of an auction Bid Request email sent to an Issuer, where they would typically just reply to send their bid.
Solution
Solution
Data that tells the full story
I didn’t want to just give Issuers a “win percentage” stat. It’s important that they know how they compare to other Issuers, and specifically what areas they’re weakest on. This lets them go back to their trade desk and make meaningful changes on pricing.
Customized insights for every user
We met with each Trade Desk and Brokerage user and collected the information that matter most to them when dealing with the day-to-day. There was a diverse number of requirements, so we wanted to make sure that every user could customize their summary exactly as they needed it. Thus, we created this Highlight Stat component using table columns and filters.
Outcomes
Outcomes
Structured Note traders from the Issuers were some of the most fun user interviews I’ve ever done. They were so happy and grateful that someone was finally designing something for them.
Roll out is still ongoing, but multiple trade desks have been able to start using it and filling orders. Internal and external feedback was extremely positive with user adoption being seamless.
To continue measuring successful adoption, I will be watching User Session Playbacks using WalkMe to explore any interaction friction. If given more time to iterate, I will explore even better ways to display and prioritize order tickets.
“This is really great. Everything I asked for you did, and then some.”
