Enterprise Banking

Retail & Corporate

UX Research

UXUI Redesign

Web

B2C

B2B

MVP Launched

Banking Without Friction

Banking Without Friction

Banking Without Friction

Redesigning Coronation Merchant Bank's Internet Banking Experience From a Legacy Platform to a Modern, Scalable Digital Banking Solution

Redesigning Coronation Merchant Bank's Internet Banking Experience From a Legacy Platform to a Modern, Scalable Digital Banking Solution

Redesigning Coronation Merchant Bank's Internet Banking Experience From a Legacy Platform to a Modern, Scalable Digital Banking Solution

"We didn't redesign screens.

We redesigned confidence."

"We didn't redesign screens.

We redesigned confidence."

"We didn't redesign screens.

We redesigned confidence."

The Story: A Bank Standing at a Crossroad

The Story: A Bank Standing at a Crossroad

The Story: A Bank Standing at a Crossroad

Imagine you are a finance director at a thriving Lagos-based company. Your company banks with Coronation Merchant Bank a respected name in Nigeria's financial sector. But every time you need to initiate a bulk payroll run, approve a vendor payment, or check your company's FX position, you brace yourself. The platform is slow. The interface feels like it was designed in a different era. Approvals require navigating through multiple confusing screens. Worse, the system occasionally times out mid-transaction forcing you to start over.

Now imagine you are a Private Banking client high net worth, time-poor, and accustomed to premium experiences in every other facet of life. You log onto Coronation's internet banking platform and feel underwhelmed. Where is the portfolio overview you need at a glance? Why does downloading a statement involve five clicks? Why can't you see your investment performance alongside your account balances in one place?

These were not hypothetical scenarios. They were real frustrations voiced by real customers and they sat at the heart of why Coronation Merchant Bank made the bold decision to not just patch its existing internet banking platform, but to rebuild it entirely.

The Project

The Project

In May 2025, Coronation Merchant Bank officially kicked off a strategic initiative to completely rebuild its Internet Banking Platform covering both Retail (Affluent and Private Banking) and Corporate clients The goal was clear: deliver a seamless, secure, and modern digital banking experience that could scale with the bank's growth ambitions and meet the rising expectations of a sophisticated client base.

Research: Listening Before Designing

Research: Listening Before Designing

Research: Listening Before Designing

"The old platform felt like a chore. I sometimes had to send instructions to my relationship manager because it's faster than fighting with the online banking."

- Corporate Banking Client

Key Pain Points Identified

Performance & Reliability: Slow load times and session timeout issues

Navigation Complexity: Users struggled to find key features

No Self-Service: Simple tasks required branch visits or had to call relationship managers

Corporate Workflow Gaps: Poorly designed Maker-Checker flows

Fragmented Financial View: No holistic view of accounts

Not Responsive: Platform unusable on mobile browsers

Security Friction: Security measures created unnecessary barriers

Two Users, One Platform

One of the most important early design decisions was acknowledging that Retail and Corporate user have fundamentally different mental models. A Corporate Finance Manager authorizing a payroll run thinks very differently from a Private Banking client checking their investment portfolio.

Retail User

Affluent & Private Banking Clients

Needs: Simplicity, speed, holistic financial overview, self-service, investments and loan visibility, lifestyle features, mobile-first access

Corporate User

SME, Corporate & Institutional Clients

Needs: Role-based access, Maker-Checker workflows, bulk payments, multiple account management, payroll, audit trails, scheduled reports

Design Principles

Design Principles

Design Principles

One Platform, Two Worlds

One Platform, Two Worlds

Retail and Corporate experiences tailored to context while sharing a unified design system.

Security Without Friction

Security Without Friction

Security measures should protect without creating barriers that frustrate legitimate users

Clarity Over Cleverness

Clarity Over Cleverness

Every screen should communicate, not impress. Users should always know where they are and what to d

next.

Trust Through Consistency

Trust Through Consistency

A banking platform earns trust through predictable, reliable interactions. Visual and interaction consistency i

non-negotiable.

Efficiency as Respect

Efficiency as Respect

High-frequency tasks (transfers, statement downloads, approvals) should be completable in as few steps a

possible.

Key Design Decisions & Rationales

Key Design Decisions & Rationales

Key Design Decisions & Rationales

Decision 1: Dual-Mode Multiple Transfer

Decision 1: Dual-Mode Multiple Transfer

Rather than building a single, generic multi-recipient payment flow, I designed two distinct transfer experiences Multiple Transfer for Retail users and Bulk Upload alongside Multiple Transfer for Corporate users both sharing the same underlying design system but structured around the fundamentally different ways each user type thinks about sending money to more than one recipient.


The Retail Multiple Transfer flow was designed for the individual who occasionally needs to split a payment across a handful of recipients a salary advance to two employees, rent and utilities paid together, or splitting funds between family members. The experience is personal, manual, and conversational: users add recipients one at a time, see each beneficiary card appear inline, and confirm the full list before a single authentication step clears all transfers in one go. The interface keeps every recipient visible simultaneously so the user can review the full picture before committing.


The Corporate experience required an entirely different architecture. A corporate finance team managing payroll for 200 staff members, or disbursing vendor payments across dozens of accounts, cannot add recipients one at a time. For them, I designed a Bulk Upload flow a CSV or Excel file upload with a validation layer that catches errors (duplicate account numbers, mismatched beneficiary names, missing reference codes) before any transaction is initiated. Once validated, the file generates a structured payment batch that flows directly into the Maker-Checker approval workflow. Corporate users also retain access to the manual Multiple Transfer option for ad-hoc multi-recipient payments where a spreadsheet would be overkill.

Rationale:

Research and stakeholder sessions surfaced a clear behavioral divide. Retail users adding multiple recipients were doing so intentionally, one decision at a time they wanted to see and control each entry. Corporate finance users, by contrast, were working from pre-prepared payment schedules, payroll exports, and vendor lists that already existed as structured data files. Forcing them to manually re-enter that data inside a banking interface would have introduced transcription errors, wasted significant time, and created exactly the kind of friction that was driving corporate clients to workarounds. The design decision was not just about convenience it was about matching the tool to the actual workflow each user type already had in place before they opened the app.

Decision 2: Maker-Checker Workflow Redesign

Decision 2: Maker-Checker Workflow Redesign

The corporate payment authorization flow was the most critical pain point in the old system. Approvers received inadequate context about what they were approving, and the flow was opaque. I redesigned this to give Approvers a rich, clear summary of every transaction detail before approval or rejection. The entire audit trail who initiated, who approved, timestamps was made accessible and downloadable.

Rationale:

Clear approval context reduces errors and builds trust in the system.

Decision 3: Progressive Disclosure for Complex Features

Decision 3: Progressive Disclosure for Complex Features

Banking platforms are feature-rich, creating a real risk of overwhelming users. I applied progressive disclosure throughout surfacing the most important information upfront and revealing complexity only when needed. For Pay Someone New, the best bank suggestions will display once the users start entering the account number, the user picks the right bank from the suggested banks and the account names auto populate; more complex options like

Pay Existing Beneficiary, FX Transfers, Bulk Payments, and Schedule Payments are shown prominently via a drop-down selector and are at the same level but contextually selected.

Rationale:

This keeps the interface clean without hiding functionality.

Decision 4: Showing Live Balance in Transfer Flows

Decision 4: Showing Live Balance in Transfer Flows

One specific design decision that had strong user research backing: showing the Available Balance prominently on the transfer and payment screens (with a hide/show toggle). Users repeatedly told us in research that one of the most frustrating things about the old platform was having to navigate away from a transfer screen to check their balance.

Rationale:

Surfacing it directly with a clear visual hierarchy that the balance is live data reduced cognitive load and prevented transaction errors.

The Transformation

The Transformation

From legacy screens to modern, intuitive experiences

From legacy screens to modern, intuitive experiences

Login Screens Redesign

Login Screens Redesign

BEFORE

old Username and password login screens

AFTER

Clean, secured, redesigned username and password login screens

Dashboard Redesign

Dashboard Redesign

BEFORE

Flat account table, no financial overview, no quick actions

AFTER

Holistic financial view, live balance, investments, cashflow analytics

Account Redesign

Account Redesign

BEFORE

Flat account table, no financial overview, no quick actions

AFTER

Holistic financial view, live balance, investments, cashflow analytics

Transfer Redesign

Transfer Redesign

BEFORE

Flat account table, no financial overview, no quick actions

AFTER

Holistic financial view, live balance, investments, cashflow analytics

Some Additional New Screens

Some Additional New Screens

The following screens are some new capabilities that did not exist in the old platform areas where the redesign added significant new value:

Responsive Screens

Outcomes: What the Work Delivered

Outcomes: What the Work Delivered

Outcomes: What the Work Delivered

Nov '25

MVP 1 Launched

On time, on scope

2 Types

Users Served

Retail & Corporate

Positive

Customer Response

Strong adoption + positive feedback at

launch

Customer Impact

Customer Impact

High onboarding adoption from existing customers invited to migrate

Positive reception to the new dashboard layout and quick-action shortcuts

Reduction in support calls related to navigation and feature discoverability

Corporate clients specifically praised the redesigned Maker-Checker workflow

Post-launch feedback collected and fed into subsequent MVP iterations

"The new platform is so much cleaner. I can actually find what I need without calling my relationship officer."

"The new platform is so much cleaner. I can actually find what I need without calling my relationship officer."

- Retail Banking Customer, Post-Launch Feedback

"The approvals process is finally straightforward. Our finance team can process payroll in a fraction of the time."

"The approvals process is finally straightforward. Our finance team can process payroll in a fraction of the time."

- Corporate Banking Customer, Post-Launch Feedback

Reflection: What I'd Do Differently

Reflection: What I'd Do Differently

What Worked Well

Leading with research grounding decisions in user data

Building the design system early

Staying close to development

Progressive scope management

What I Would Do Differently

Usability testing earlier and more frequently

Earlier involvement of Customer Service team

More formal design specification documentation

What Comes Next

What Comes Next

MVP 1 is live and performing well. The roadmap ahead includes: The Prime Brokerage, Payment Tags, Lagos State Collections, Daily Limit Management, MyBankStatement initiative, Prime Brokerage, NIBSS Direct Debit, Card Management, Life Style Support, Report and Analysis, expanded investment and loan self-service capabilities, and continued performance optimization. The design system and component architecture built for MVP 1 were deliberately engineered to support these evolutions.

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

Role

Lead Product Designer

Timeline

May – Nov 2025 (MVP 1)

Platform

Web (Responsive)

Scope

Retail & Corporate

My Role

My Role

I led the product design on this project as the Lead Product Designer. I collaborated closely with Project Managers, Product Managers, and an external development vendor responsible for building and deploying the applications.

I led the product design on this project as the Lead Product Designer. I collaborated closely with Project Managers, Product Managers, and an external development vendor responsible for building and deploying the applications.

Led stakeholder workshops and discovery sessions with Group Heads across Affluent, Private Corporate, and Investment Banking

Led stakeholder workshops and discovery sessions with Group Heads across Affluent, Private Corporate, and Investment Banking

Conducted and synthesised user research including customer interviews and analysis of historical feedback

Conducted and synthesised user research including customer interviews and analysis of historical feedback

Defined the full information architecture and user flows for both Retail and Corporate journey

Defined the full information architecture and user flows for both Retail and Corporate journey

Created wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and final UI designs in Figma

Created wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and final UI designs in Figma

Led design QA during UAT and incorporated post-launch feedback into subsequent iteration

Led design QA during UAT and incorporated post-launch feedback into subsequent iteration

© 2026 Oluwafunmilola Olukanni. All rights reserved.

Senior Product/UXUI Designer · Lagos, Nigeria

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