CLIENT

Bank of America

ROLE

Design & Delivery Lead

TEAM

• Account Lead
• Design Director
• 3x UX Designers
• 1 Product Manager
• Technical Lead
• 20+ Engineers split between onshore/off-shore

DURATION

22 Weeks

BUDGET

2.5M

PROJECT OVERVIEW

This project focused on the full-scale redesign of a mission-critical legacy application used by the global investment banking group of a major financial institution. The application served as the primary system for managing all investment deal data, including fee structures, journal entries, and real-time currency conversions. Originally built over two decades ago, the legacy system had become outdated, cumbersome, and non-compliant with modern business needs, especially in terms of usability, data governance, and global scalability.

The modernization initiative aimed to deliver a centralized, intuitive web-based solution that would support the complex workflows of investment banking users located around the world. In doing so, the new application needed to uphold rigorous financial requirements while also incorporating user-centric design to reduce manual processes, eliminate reliance on third-party tools, and increase the accuracy and reliability of deal data across international markets.

CHALLENGE

The client needed to replace a 25-year-old legacy application that was deeply embedded in the daily workflows of global investment banking professionals. Over the years, the tool had become inefficient and unreliable, driving users to work outside the system and introducing risks to data integrity and compliance. The legacy experience surfaced all data with little regard for user role or task, did not allow data to be saved mid-entry, and lacked basic reporting and auditing features.

Widespread use of Excel to manage investment calculations, poor currency conversion accuracy for non-U.S. markets, and the inability to track deal statuses within the application created inconsistencies and compliance issues. The outdated system also required users to manage complex workflows through multiple pop-up windows, often leading to timeouts and lost data. Global teams resorted to regional workarounds, highlighting the absence of a unified, globally-aware solution that respected regional financial norms and user expectations.

APPROACH

The redesign effort began by establishing a comprehensive understanding of the legacy system, its users, and the regulatory pressures driving the need for change. Over 40 hours of interviews were conducted with stakeholders and key users across multiple geographies to understand day-to-day workflows, critical pain points, and opportunities for improvement. This effort was combined with a full product audit that helped define the current-state problem and shaped a future-state vision grounded in real user needs.

Insights were synthesized into a prioritized set of business requirements and translated into a well-structured backlog. From there, the team reimagined the application’s information architecture, navigation model, and interaction patterns to support more efficient workflows. A series of high-fidelity prototypes were developed to showcase key functionality and design directions, which were validated through iterative user testing sessions that minimized disruption to business operations.