Virgin Money Investments & Pensions
This was my second stint with the fantastic folks at Virgin Money. This time, I led a talented team of UX/UI designers, a user researcher, and a content designer. Together, we enhanced existing Virgin Money Investments and Pensions online services and designed a completely new, user-centred pension drawdown service.
Virgin Money’s pension and investment products have long taken a digital-first, self-service approach, including hands-off options like the Navigator pension. However, customers couldn’t draw down from their pension online, leaving them to make complex decisions as they approached retirement.
Using a user-centred approach, we designed, prototyped, and validated key pension drawdown journeys. We tested each journey with both existing and prospective customers, many of whom told us they were keen to see these journeys brought to life so they could benefit from them.
Enabling self-service pension drawdown
Whilst we were validating our journeys, we found that many customers didn’t fully understand the pension drawdown options available, particularly the tax implications over the course of retirement.
As a team, we revisited this part of the pension drawdown journey, refining our approach and returning to pencil and paper to rethink the experience. When we next put it in front of users, understanding and confidence was much improved.
Ensuring impact
Customers could utilise a range of tools to help their decision making around pension withdrawals.
Handing over a complete pension drawdown experience
Virgin Money Investments and Pensions were acquired by Octopus Money Direct at a point that aligned almost perfectly with our work on pension drawdown. By then, we had designed, tested, and refined the full set of drawdown journeys.
This allowed us to hand over a complete end-to-end customer experience—from opening a pension or transferring in, through to drawing down in retirement and understanding what happens to any remaining funds. I’m excited to see these drawdown journeys built and added to the product offering.