Shipping disruptive institutional finance products
Executive summary
AllianceBernstein wanted to offer their clients innovative, easy-to-use tools to quickly address complex questions. One of the first in the line up was Alphalytics.
Role
I worked as Product Design Lead in a small team of 6 to help the AB team define, design and ship this disruptive product.
Outcome
To measure the progress of Alphalytics, Bernstein created an advisory board of representatives from the world's leading institutional asset owners and users.
Words from Robert van Brugge, CEO, Bernstein Research
"Since rolling out the tool last year, we've seen steady client demand and believe that our research and product roadmaps have set us up on the right path to innovation as we continue to evolve the offering to better service our users."
Discovery
Scope
Prototyping
UI
Branding
Conversion optimisation
Strategy
Design systems
Product design
The opportunity
Asset managers live under intense pressure to perform. They're motivated to try anything that gives them an edge.
AllianceBernstein spotted an opportunity: build a product around idiosyncratic alpha - a deep measure of weighted performance that no competitor offered. Screening thousands of funds, peer comparisons, diagnostics to understand why one fund outperforms another.
Bringing design thinking to institutional finance
This product didn't exist anywhere else. Idiosyncratic Alpha was a brand new measure. We speak design and product, so we used visuals to figure out the shape of the product, quickly picking up new language (and acronyms!).
The first step was helping asset managers quickly find and follow funds.
Instant value
They'd then quickly see each fund compared at a high level.
Run diagnostics on each fund
Quickly and easily run diagnosis with live data feeds and charts that show key measures and benchmarks.
Then compare how each fund compares to its peers
Using different Alpha measures, time periods and quartiles
As well as correlation analysis
Choose peers and run various types of analysis for deep granular details. We used a consistent heat mapping colour system throughout the product to enable asset managers to get insight from a quick scan.
The transformation
We proved design thinking works in institutional finance. The team and I were able to hand-over future versions to new in-house design hires following our engagement.
