I was hired at RBC to take the lead on UFP which was at that point in its infancy. It was meant to be a platform that served Financial Advisors (FA) and Regional Managers (RM) with their information needs. A one stop shop to get fund performances/balances, client and advisor info, account breakdown and more. While some of this information was available, it was separated across multiple platforms which weren't user friendly like excel sheets and tableau charts.​

While I have worked on many projects during my time at RBC, this has been the primary one. I have overseen and designed multiple iterations of UFP, making it one of the most full fledged platforms at RBC that is used by thousands of FAs and RMs across the bank. One of the key elements behind its success is the detailed research across multiple user groups which enabled me to improve, course correct and get agreement with stakeholders for faster implementations.

UFP originally started with a generative research initiative which consisted of interviewing FAs and RMs about the possibility of a unified platform containing sales and investment book information. They collected all the requirements and then started with parts of UFP that had low resistance from other departments of GAM.​

This included a FA and RM view that displayed per-client (for FA) and per-advisor (for RM) mutual fund sales and investment book holdings. With some info about account-type breakdown.

When I got the lead for MyPractice, the product owner had successfully reached agreements with other departments to get access to more data for expanding MyPractice which included the following additions:

The Regional Manager view was designed to help RMs with their coaching of financial advisors. This may include increasing periodic client contributions, focusing on certain products and general assistance. To enable this, this view provides info on sales activity to track Advisor sales and also, mutual fund sales (Which are more popular, etc.). Along with sales, they can also see their holdings by mutual funds or advisors to see how much is being held.

The Advisor view was designed to mirror the RM view but focusing on the client side, with mutual fund sales and client focused investment book. This aimed to help Advisors by providing information about their clients in a more digestible format and data they can filter through. Previously, Advisors had to rely on excel sheets and tableau dashboard to get this information.

Events were added to allow for a proactive approach from both RMs and FAs to engage in conversations about clients. These events would notify them about any flight risks, transfers out, maturity dates, RIFF payments and portfolio manager changes.

The event view was tweaked for both RMs and FAs. RMs got a view of the advisors where they can send out events or get notified about advisor activity and FAs got notified about their clients.

We did a limited release of the platform and invited some of the RMs and FAs to share their thoughts on using the platform. The goal was to check what value was being provided by the platform and if it was lacking, what were the missing pieces?
This took the form of an interview with following parameters:

First we interviewed RMs and Business Development Managers to figure how they are using the platform (how often? if not then why?) to generate insights. Also, how is it helping with coaching, check their satisfaction with the tool and find further opportunities for refinement/iteration

We were able to interview 3 RMs and 3 BDMs and got the following insights

The Financial advisors also looked into the value that the platform was providing. Most importantly it focused on understanding how they use the platform for insight generations and client conversation.

We were able to interview 5 FAs and got the following insights

Based on my testing, I realized the primary needs were not related to usability but data needs and I got to charting a path towards expanding the platform using data we had accessible.

This meant:

Taking the feedback to heart, I set out working on the Client Profile for the FAs and the aim was to use this as a template to create an advisor profile for RMs. This also marked the addition of GIC and PAC data into the platform along with distributing client money into their respective accounts.

A new addition to the platform was client insights based on FA recommendations, we were able add relevant info about the client like