The problem
The product is a consumer lending marketplace: a place to compare and pick loans from banks and microfinance lenders, submit one unified application, and get instant approvals or better-priced alternatives. The business runs on qualified leads — segmenting, sorting, and enriching applicant data to predict approval.
Two things were dragging on growth. Conversion from the application into a registered account was low, and the account itself delivered no real value, so people had no reason to use it. The team kept shipping shallow changes without understanding what users actually needed: research was thin, the interface kept missing expectations, and results were inconsistent because hypotheses were barely tested. Even running interviews, the product owner felt stuck in a loop — getting feedback, optimizing around it, and watching the impact fizzle.
The job: instant, transparent answers
Starting the customer research over from a blank page changed the picture. The insight: users wanted instant results and full transparency. They were impatient and demanding — they expected their data pulled up from a phone number alone, expected flexibility, and judged the experience against the fastest consumer apps they already used, even while carrying heavy existing debt.
That reframed the goal. The job wasn't "fill out a form and make an account." It was "tell me, right now, what I qualify for — without friction."
What changed
- The application was compressed to a single step, with users informed about the higher-level outcome at exactly the right moment instead of being asked to grind through a long form.
- The account was made genuinely useful — generated automatically and rebuilt around functions users valued, so registration stopped feeling like a dead end.
- Backend integrations were added with lenders and core data sources, so approvals and alternatives could surface instantly.
- A recurring checklist replaced ad-hoc tweaks, weeding out low-level busywork and exposing the hidden problems that mattered.
The results
- Registration conversion grew from 46% to 85% — a 39% relative lift.
- Abandoned applications fell from 36% to 14%, less than half the previous drop-off.
- User satisfaction reached 5 out of 5, with the personal account finally seen as worth using.