01
Context
Business customers who had already chosen a vehicle still had to phone, wait and chase to get finance for it. Quotes, credit decisions, invoices and paperwork moved through calls, PDFs and print-and-scan, so a deal took six days and the customer did most of the chasing.
I was Lead Product Designer at Lombard, working with product managers, engineers and UX researchers. About 70% of my time went on a UI uplift across the core journeys, and the rest on a visual proposition showing how lending could be faster.
02
The problem
Lombard is NatWest Group’s asset finance business, funding everything from cars and vans to construction, production and farming equipment, and it has financed UK businesses since 1861. Its customers are businesses, from sole traders to limited companies. The experience created friction at several points:
Even the digital journey stopped at the quote, followed by a call back, an invoice chase, and documents to print, sign and scan
Most of the six days was waiting, not work: three days passed waiting for the dealer’s invoice
More than 70% of customers dropped out in the middle of the application
Scope and requirements changed every sprint, and the business was generating technical debt
Lombard and business-banking journeys needed to come together, ahead of a move to NatWest branding
Stakeholders found wireframes hard to follow, so it was hard to agree what the design should achieve
The challenge was to make the journeys clearer and more consistent, and to show stakeholders what a faster, self-service route could look like.
03
What I did
1. Make the problem visible
Stakeholders couldn’t follow wireframes, so I changed the format. Working with the product manager, I designed a visual storytelling technique that followed one customer through the journey before digital, today and in the future.
It showed the problem the way the customer lived it, the calls, the waiting and the chasing, and then a shorter route where they build a quote to fit their budget, share it with a partner, and pick their vehicle without calling us. In the storyboard, the vehicle is collected on Day 2 instead of Day 6.
2. Align on who it’s for
I worked with the product manager and UX researchers on the target audience, business customers, and we aligned on two personas: Decision Makers and Doers.
3. Uplift the UI of the core journeys
Instead of designing the application and onboarding journeys from scratch, I brought across features from the business-banking onboarding journey, which had already been tested with users, and uplifted the Lombard UI to match.
That kept the two journeys similar, saved build time, and meant a later switch to NatWest business banking branding wouldn’t be an issue. I also created asset iconography and UI brand guidelines for the wider team.
Team page feature as scalable in Lombard
User Journey and Prototype
UI brand guidelines and assets for web, tablet, mobile
4. Make the personalised quote easy to understand
I designed the personalised quote for mobile and web. Scrollers for deposit and final lump sum update a live quote, laid out around a car graphic, so customers can see how their choices change the monthly payment. Customers can save, email or print the quote, and it is clear a full credit check only happens if they choose to apply.
The quote sits inside a six-step progress bar (Asset, Quote, Apply, Decision, Review, Funds), so customers see the whole journey from the first screen. The journey covers the full range of Lombard assets and business types, with regulated and unregulated quote variants.
5. Test with customers, and keep the build moving
I ran usability testing with 20 existing Lombard customers, testing hypotheses against what they actually did.
Scope changed every sprint and the business was generating technical debt. I helped the team adopt Lean UX and introduced bi-weekly user feedback loops, so decisions came from what users did rather than from the latest change in scope. I also coached engineers on usability using data.
04
Outcome
Task success above 90% in testing with 20 existing Lombard customers, with strong satisfaction. Customers said the journey was easy to understand and the instructions were clear, and they felt comfortable checking their rate because a full credit check only happens if they apply.
The storytelling gave stakeholders a proposition they could follow: a customer collecting the vehicle on Day 2 instead of Day 6, with an instant credit decision, self-serve invoice upload and e-signing replacing call-backs and chasing.
Most features were brought across from the tested business-banking onboarding journey, which saved build time. Lombard and NatWest business finance now share one set of patterns.
05
What I learned
People who aren’t designers don’t read wireframes, and asking them to is a design problem in itself. Showing the customer’s journey as a story got stakeholders engaged with the proposition, not just the screens.
With customers, what a check would and wouldn’t involve mattered as much as the interface. Being clear that a full credit check only happens if they apply made them comfortable to explore their rate.