Invest Platform Liquidations Research
May 2023 - August 2023
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Background: SoFi’s Invest platform allows users to invest in a variety of assets, including stocks, ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds), and previously cryptocurrencies. SoFi Invest also offers automated investing through their robo-advisor, as well as features like commission free trading and educational resources to help users make informed investment decisions
👦 My Role
Lead UX Researcher collaborating with 1 Data Scientist and 1 UX Designer
⚙️ Research Methods
Survey Design &
Moderated Interviews
Thematic Analysis
🌟 Research Objectives 🌟
Determine why liquidations are occurring on the Invest platform using sound research methodology.
Gain a better grasp on members’ liquidation behaviors and pain points.
Understand how SoFi Invest can continue to support its members and limit the wave of outflows in the future.
Previous Research Context
Millions of dollars were being liquidated from the Invest platform on a monthly basis.
The liquidations are highly responsive to market conditions.
Older users and users with higher FICO scores were more likely to liquidate their accounts.
These graphs were created in collaboration with the Data Scientist to better visualize the different types of users that were liquidating from the Invest Platform. I am unable to show the exact data due to NDA
After looking at the quantitative data context provided by the Data Scientist, I decided to focus on three distinct segments of liquidated users as they comprised the majority of overall liquidators on the platform.
I wanted to better understand each segment’s needs and pain points with the Invest platform from a qualitative perspective.
Selling During Downturn
Members that liquidated when the market was down (4/23/2023 - 4/30/2023)
FICO Range: 600-725
Avg Liquidated Value: $1000-$1400
Ready For Retirement
Members that were between the ages of 50-80 years old when they liquidated their accounts
FICO Range: 675-775
Avg Liquidated Value: $2400-$3400
⚙️ Research Methodology ⚙️
Screener Survey
There was a twofold advantage to start the process with a multiple choice screener survey using Qualtrics. It allowed liquidated users a chance to give a preliminary reason as to why they had liquidated off of the platform and it helped me distill their interest in participating in further research on a much wider scale.
💬 Questions included…
“What is your FICO score?”
Moderated Interviews
🔧 Tools
Qualtrics
UserInterviews.com
Figma
Zoom
Problem Statement: There has been a large amount of money being liquidated from the SoFi invest platform. I was tasked with identifying behaviors and needs among segments we are winning with in order to expand that audience, along with highlighting gaps in the value SoFi creates for other audiences.
To gain a deeper understanding of each segment's investing behavior and pain points with the Invest platform, I decided to conduct moderated interviews with users who’d taken the survey across the three segments using open ended questions. UserInterviews.com and Zoom were used to organize and conduct the interviews.
The goal of these interviews wasn’t to just find out why users liquidated from the Invest platform, but also to deduce their investing style, usage of different investing platforms, and how they prefer to learn about investing trends.
💬 Questions included…
“How would you describe your investing style in terms of risk management?”
“Which of your investments do you wish you could change and how?”
Affluent & High AUM
Members with a FICO score of at least 750 and have the account open for at least 6 months
FICO Range: 750-850
Avg Liquidated Value: $3100-$4100
“How long have you had a SoFi Invest account?”
“Which of the following best describes why you withdrew your funds?”
There were a total of 117 responses to the survey over the span of two weeks
“What do you expect a brokerage platform to provide you when signing up?”
I conducted 10 interviews across the segments over the span of two weeks
Thematic Analysis
Thematic analysis was employed to uncover recurring themes across the ten interview transcripts, offering insights into users' behaviors, preferences, and challenges they encountered based on segmentation while utilizing the Invest platform.
Figjam was an essential tool in the process, aiding me in being able to visualize all of the data on a larger scale and how they connect with each other to identify key usability challenges as well as prioritize key feature enhancements within the Invest platform.
I am unable to show the exact thematic analysis chart due to NDA, this is a recreation of the process that took place.
🔑 Research Insights 🔑
Most participants primary reason for liquidating were for reasons that were NOT SoFi driven, regardless of segment
Solutions that SoFi can drive to bring members back
Guide members on how to use SoFi Invest with greater confidence
Creating “sticky” experiences to pull members in for the longterm
Prioritizing high impact features for retention on the platform
I am unable to show the exact data due to NDA
I am unable to show the exact data due to NDA
