NAB Edge

Overview

In 2022, NAB acquired Citibank’s Australian consumer business. The Edge program was established to migrate customer accounts, assets and experiences across to NAB systems by 2025 — a clear time box for design and delivery.

The scope included white label brands BOQ, Coles, Kogan, Qantas, Suncorp and Virgin Money, covering migration and origination pathways, card management and the entire product lifecycle.

My Role

I acted as principal product designer for unsecured lending origination, guiding the work of five other designers across Melbourne, Sydney and Ho Chi Minh City. I collaborated with contributing design teams, nine development squads and five product teams.

The Problem

The legacy origination form took 15 minutes on average to complete. It required extensive manual data entry, had expanded over successive regulatory waves to comply with AML/CTF, KYC and NCCP responsible lending obligations, and had become difficult to navigate — full of contradictory, bank-centric language.

Customers were frustrated by the burden of reporting their finances in detail for relatively small credit amounts. Managing a consistent approach across seven brands, 21 products and five user types — including service agents — required constant auditing and stakeholder alignment.

Our Vision

Help customers apply for a product and receive a decision in under five minutes, enabled by income and debt pre-fill data services.

Process

Design System and Shared Layouts

Working closely with the design system, onboarding and legal teams, we identified opportunities to rationalise ‘same but different’ form screens across products into common shared layouts — with variants only where necessary. These layouts were themed for each white label brand, with content fragments configurable per brand and operational model.

Friction Measurement

We removed friction through pre-fill and simpler, consistent interactions. In some cases we deliberately added friction to aid comprehension and reassure customers at key decision points. Friction was measured continuously as a proxy for time-to-complete and conversion.

Conversational Content

Content designers worked with us through customer testing, plotting the emotional arc through the form. New screens prepared users for each section and progressively surfaced key information only when relevant.

Continuous Discovery

We tested with participants fortnightly throughout the program. Findings fed directly into shaping sessions and were prioritised for the next iteration. Product and development squads embraced this continuous discovery-to-delivery workflow having observed customer sessions firsthand.

Customer satisfaction was measured via a standardised metric, enabling benchmarking and continuous measurement of design interventions — providing confidence for product owners making the call to adopt new design systems and experiences.

Outcomes

The program rollout has been successful, with new form experiences released in successive waves for each brand. Optimisation continues based on behavioural data.

• 1.5 million+ customers served
• 5 brands launched over 3 waves
• Good design award winner
• NAB equity requirement of $1.2bn
• Estimated pre-tax acquisition and integration costs of $375m

Reflection

This engagement was an opportunity to see design methods working at scale across a large surface area serving many customers. Friction measurement and customer satisfaction tooling kept prioritisation signals strong across a complex collection of environments and requirements.

New pre-fill methods — including electronic identity verification and open banking — across an evolving regulatory landscape will keep origination forms ever-changing. AI and shifting customer search behaviour will present the next design challenge.