Financial data sharing for couples
Innovation drives 10 minute process down to 30 seconds after the debut of an industry-first feature available in Intuit’s Turbo app.
Problem
Keeping track of your own financial health, such as credit score, can be critical when it comes to buying a home or getting a car loan. For married couples, it’s difficult to get a complete financial picture in one place, so when one person manages the finances for the household there are blind spots that can affect their lives.
Turbo app displaying a customer’s financial info
The Turbo app by Intuit offered our customers a view of their financial data, but for the “Family CFO” that manages the finances, this single view wasn’t enough. The major onramp for Turbo was TurboTax, which already had shared data for couples that filed jointly. Our customers needed a shared view, something that no other company or service was offering.
Solution
Intuit’s Turbo app allows customers to view their own personal financial data. I designed a major feature to invite, share, and view credit reports and financial data between couples. This feature was targeted toward our customers that had already filed their taxes with their spouse. When this feature was launched, customers were able to invite their spouse by sending an email from the app. The recipient would then be able to create an account and then authorize to share their data with their spouse. We were able to quickly get the MVP launched and used by our customers.
Before the sharing feature was designed, Intuit’s Turbo app was only able to display the customer’s financial data, like many other competing services. To distinguish itself and offer a real customer benefit I designed the feature that allows couples to share financial data with each other.
For the MVP, I designed the ability to securely share financial data within a married couple, using the platform’s invitation process. This allowed for one-way sharing and then two-way sharing. I knew there was a better way for couples to unlock this feature, so I proposed a better solution.
The MVP was launched on iOS and web that enabled the first-of-its-kind data sharing for couples. Our customers were able to view their entire household’s financial data in one place.
Then after launching the initial feature I led an initiative to increase user adoption by turning a complex 10 minute process down to 30 seconds. My user research was guiding the changes that we needed:
“Why do I need to create an account if I’m not the one using the dashboard”
“My husband is not going to check his email”
“I’m usually quick to respond to her texts”
Outcome
Intuit became the first FinTech in its class that offered a combined financial view for couples, establishing a key differentiator that our customers have been requesting.
After a successful MVP, I designed an innovative invite process that previously took 10 minutes and reduced it to 30 seconds by shifting from email to text messaging. To do this I drove partnerships and collaboration to get approval from Intuit’s legal and compliance teams along with TransUnion, our partner credit bureau, to create an industry-leading approach to data sharing invites, authorization, and consent.
Authored content for dozens of self-help articles to answer customer questions and adherence to legal compliance
Durable design: feature was exposed to Turbo customers, but was defined and built in a reusable manner to allow easy adoption of this service by QuickBooks customers.
Prototype screens that convinced Intuit and TransUnion stakeholders to approve a new way to securely share financial data using text messaging. This method met all compliance requirements while providing a higher-level of security. The real benefit was that it was much easier for our customers to do what they wanted to do.
Challenges
Convincing all stakeholders to allow data sharing without an account or requiring onboarding to the Turbo app. This was a major shift and was never considered an option until I advocated for it. I did this by showing prototypes and sharing my hypothesis that by making the process much faster, therefore reducing friction, the sharing partner would be more willing to share. This was all in service to the goal of increasing participation in sharing within couples. This hypothesis was backed by user research I shared that highlighted the roles and attitudes of the “family CFO” and less-involved partner.
Persuading TransUnion, our partner credit bureau, to allow for data-sharing purely via SMS and without account creation. My prototype satisfied all of the legal and industry requirements that were needed (FCRA, TCPA). This allowed TransUnion and Intuit to be the first in the industry to provide this streamlined and secure method of data sharing.
A prototype that showed the new method of securely sharing financial data using text messaging between a couple. This prototype proved to all stakeholders that all of the security and compliance requirements were meant and might offer a more robust authentication method than previously used.
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