AMP Advice 360 Goals
Advice for everyday Australians
AMP Advice 360 Goals
Financial Advice
Experience Leadership
Only 9% of Australians seek financial advice. It’s expensive, trust in the industry is low, and the traditional model talks about wealth rather than what people actually want from life. AMP set out to change that with Goals 360, a service that starts with a customer’s goals and builds the advice around them. As Senior UX Consultant with Deloitte Digital, I led product design for the platform behind it: a responsive, touch-screen advice tool that turned a paper-heavy advice conversation into an interactive, shared experience between clients, goals coaches, advisers and paraplanners. Clients could see their goals, move and prioritise them, and watch in real time how each decision affected their retirement. My role UX lead, UI design, UX copywriting, requirements, user testing and scrum coaching across the fact find, dashboard, goals experience and retirement planning. The approach I co-designed the platform with practising financial advisers through expert interviews, ride-alongs and LUMA-based workshops, then turned the outcomes into user stories for a multidisciplinary scrum team. The platform had to serve eight user types and work on tablets as well as large in-office touch screens, and the core features went live within six months.
Challenge
Financial advice in Australia had a reach problem and a trust problem. Only 9% of Australians sought advice, a Statement of Advice could cost $3,000–6,000, and many people saw advisers as salespeople pushing products rather than helping them. Yet people who received advice were, on average, $70,000 better off. AMP’s answer was Goals 360: a shift from wealth-based advice to goals-based advice, where the conversation starts with how a client wants to live (being debt free, pursuing a passion, retiring well) and the financial plan follows. To make that work at scale, AMP needed to digitise the whole advice process, from first conversation to signed Statement of Advice. That meant turning real-world advice conversations into a responsive platform that clients, goals coaches, advisers and paraplanners could all use, on tablets and on large touch screens in partner practices. It also had to be built on top of an existing insurance advice pilot, merged with a separate touch-screen goals experience, and delivered within an aggressive six-month timeframe as part of a wider transformation of AMP Advice. Digitising a human conversation. Financial advice happens face to face. We had to turn real conversations, decision models and complex financial calculators into an interface that felt like a guided story, not a spreadsheet. Eight user types, one platform. New, existing and returning clients, advisers, money coaches and paraplanners all needed different access, views and permissions inside the same system. Every screen size. The dashboard had to work responsively on tablets and on large in-office touch screens, often with several people using it in the same session. Building on what already existed. The platform sat on top of an insurance advice pilot and had to absorb a separate touch-screen goals experience, with complex goals-and-objectives features live within six months. Research at delivery speed. Co-designing with advisers and testing with users had to fit inside a fast-moving scrum environment, coordinated across innovation pods, kanban governance and multiple scrum teams. Precision versus story. The MVP was shaped largely by product owners and engineers into a mathematically precise tool. It wasn’t until phase two that it became the client-centred journey it needed to be.
Solution
Goals 360 turned financial advice into a shared, visual conversation about a client’s life rather than their portfolio. Clients explore, plan, track and realise their goals, guided by a team of concierges, goals coaches, advisers and paraplanners working from one platform. In the first session, a goals coach works with the client on a large touch screen, where they can see their goals, move them around and prioritise them. They leave with a Goals Summary, a snapshot of what matters to them. Advisers then use visual tools and real-time modelling to show how each decision, such as retiring later or paying down debt sooner, affects their goals and retirement. Clients leave with a Goals Plan of clear actions and tools to track their progress at home. Behind the scenes, the platform digitises the end-to-end advice process, from fact find to Statement of Advice. A single responsive system gives every user type the right views and permissions, built on reusable patterns for joint and single forms, calculators, scenarios and dashboards. The MVP focused on getting the advice logic right, and phase two reshaped the front end into a story-led journey that put the client’s goals at the centre. The result was advice that felt less like a sales pitch and more like planning a future, while cutting Statement of Advice preparation time by 77%.
Result
Goals 360 changed what financial advice felt like for clients and made it faster and more efficient to deliver for advisers. By digitising the advice process, preparing a Statement of Advice became 77% faster, freeing up around 18 hours per Statement of Advice that advisers could spend with clients instead of on paperwork. The service gained real traction across AMP’s network. Within its rollout, 32 practices were delivering Goals 360, helping 1,988 customers work towards 12,285 goals. Clients said it took the financial side of their lives and made it real, and advisers said seeing the impact of each change on a client’s goals resonated far more than traditional advice ever had. The work was also recognised across the design and financial services industries. 77% faster Statement of Advice preparation, saving around 18 hours each 1,988 customers working towards 12,285 goals across 32 practices 2018 Good Design Awards: Best in Class, Design Strategy, and Digital Design for the Goals 360 Advice Explorer 2018 Chant West Best Fund for Innovation 2018 Design Value Awards, Honourable Mention
From our Client:
"Will and I worked for AMP Growth Transformation building and delivering disruptive financial advice solutions in the corporate and personal finance sector. I’ve had the privilege to work with some talented UX designers in my career but few have had exceptional problem solving skills coupled with such a deep understanding of interaction design. Will is highly motivated and passionate about delivering tangible digital solutions. He brings not only his vast knowledge and commercial experience but an enthusiastic desire to deliver the best of quality, which makes everyone around him want to achieve their very best. What I value most about Will is his incredible calmness in stressful project deadlines. This is a very rare personal quality that was paramount in holding together a very fast paced and high quality agile delivery team. If you ever have the privilege to work with Will you will experience the skill, confidence and power of a true design leader."
Manny Dickson
Service Designer