True Pension Balance

The Choices Wealth Transfer platform lets Sun Life members self-serve the movement of their pension assets. After a mobile integration in Q2 2023, conversion rates fell sharply, bounce rates on the landing page climbed, and user feedback consistently pointed to confusion and distrust.

This case study documents the end-to-end redesign that reversed that decline, from research and sprint facilitation through five rounds of iterative testing to a fully shipped, WCAG AA-compliant product.

The mobile integration introduced compounding friction at every step of the user journey. Quantitative data identified the decline; direct user research explained why people were leaving.

What the Data Showed

• Conversion rates dropped from 27% in Q1 2023 following the mobile integration in Q2.
• Bounce rates on the landing page increased, users were arriving and leaving without engaging.
• Multiple investment options presented in isolation triggered decision paralysis before users reached the enrolment step.

What Users Told Us

• Users didn't understand what Choices Wealth Transfer actually offered, the landing page failed to communicate its purpose.
• Nobody knew their unlocked pension amount until after completing enrolment, creating distrust at the exact moment of commitment.
• Navigating between multiple product screens forced users to hold context in memory, compounding cognitive load at every step.

Research surfaced three addressable problems: unclear value messaging, fragmented product presentation, and opacity at the moment of financial commitment. Before any design work began, the team needed shared alignment, across Tech, Product, UX, and Business, on which problems to prioritise and what a measurably good outcome looked like.

The Discovery Approach

• A Lean Value Proposition Canvas aligned 12 stakeholders on problem definition before any wireframe was drawn.
• A 6-day cross-functional design sprint turned that alignment into structured ideation across every impacted team.
• Five rounds of user testing with real Sun Life members, each round directly shaping the next iteration.

Wireframes & Low-Fidelity Exploration

Low-fidelity wireframes translated sprint outputs into testable flows before any visual design decisions were made. Each wireframe round was paired directly with a user testing session, ensuring structural changes were validated before they became designed artefacts.

Three coordinated changes addressed every friction point identified in research: a clearer entry experience, a consolidated decision surface, and real-time transparency before commitment. Together they removed the conditions that caused drop-off, without adding complexity.

• Single-screen investment overview replacing a multi-page navigation maze.
• Personalised, process-first landing page replacing a generic informational layout.
• Real-time unlocked pension amounts shown before enrolment, the single highest-impact change in the redesign.
• Collapsible sections reducing cognitive load without hiding information.
• Tooltips demystifying financial terminology at the point of decision.
• Full WCAG AA compliance, delivering an accessible experience across all member groups.

The redesign exceeded every target set at the start of the engagement. Within one quarter of launch, the platform had not only recovered the conversion lost to the mobile integration, it surpassed the previous peak by a significant margin.

Each testing round reinforced the same insight: users don't abandon financial flows because of visual design, they abandon because they don't understand what they're being asked to do, or they don't trust what they see.

• Transparency before commitment is a conversion driver, not a trust nicety, showing the unlocked pension amount upfront was the single highest-impact change in the entire redesign.
• Mobile is a primary context, not an afterthought, the redesign recovered all conversion lost after the mobile integration by treating mobile users as the baseline, not the edge case.
• Fewer choices reduce friction more reliably than clearer copy alone, simplifying the decision surface consistently outperformed copy changes across every testing round.
• Five rounds of real-user testing isn't excessive for a high-stakes financial flow, each round uncovered something the previous one missed.

The Choices Wealth Transfer redesign shows that conversion problems in financial products are rarely visual, they're architectural. The drop-off wasn't caused by poor graphic design; it was caused by an information structure that asked users to commit before they understood and to navigate before they could decide.

The changes that drove a 51% conversion increase and $100M in incremental sales weren't clever interactions. They were clarity: show people what they can unlock, put all their options in one place, and let them trust the product before they ask them to commit to it.