The Public Portal is a front-facing platform where banks, businesses, and individuals collaborate on loan applications. Originally built for straightforward loan types, it needed to evolve to handle complex, multi-party scenarios. I partnered with multiple stakeholders and another designer to re-conceptualize the portal for multi-entity, multi-user, and high-complexity loans, while ensuring it was mobile-friendly and strategically aligned with our partners.
The Public Portal is the front-facing platform where banks, businesses, and individuals collaborate on loan applications. Originally built for PPP loans, it needed a redesign to support complex, multi-entity scenarios and align strategically with partners like Moody's.
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The Public Portal is the front-facing platform that enables banks, businesses, and individuals to collaborate on loan applications. Originally built to support quick, simple loans, the platform lacked the ability to scale for more complex lending scenarios. I worked with multiple stakeholders and collaborated with another designer to redesign the portal to support multi-entity, multi-user, and high-complexity loan applications, while making the experience mobile-friendly and strategically aligned with our partner ecosystem.
The existing portal was successful for small banks handling straightforward loans, but it broke down for larger, more complex scenarios. Key limitations included:
- An inflexible information structure that made complex cases difficult to manage
- Limited collaboration features between applicants and banks, critical to commerical lending
- Poor adaptability for mobile use
At the same time, evolving requirements meant that each design iteration surfaced new insights and priorities, which we refined collaboratively with stakeholders.
We designed four desktop versions and two mobile versions of the platform, gradually evolving functionality to align with stakeholder insights, partner requirements, and technical constraints. Key improvements include:
Flexible architecture: adapted the framework to support multiple parties and complex relationships within a single loan.
Task-centered experience: shifted toward a task-oriented workflow to make progress clearer, responsibilities easier to manage, and help users prioritize what mattered most.
Modern responsive design: delivered a consistent experience across mobile and desktop, with a cleaner, more intuitive interface
From a “futuristic” vision prototype down to an MVP aligned with the company's development frameworks, each iteration became a tool for sparking debate and clarifying requirements—turning design into part of the requirements-gathering process.
Stronger partner relationships: our redesign filled a major gap in functionality that impressed key partners.
Acquisition impact: shortly thereafter, our company was acquired by Moody's—partly due to the strength and strategic positioning of the Public Portal redesign.
Product adoption: post-acquisition, the Public Portal functionality was integrated into Moody’s suite offerings.
Internal learnings: value of prototyping early, even when requirements are unclear. Design artifacts provided a shared language that helped stakeholders refine needs, align on priorities, and ultimately shape a stronger solution.
Messaging integration to improve collaboration across entities.
Further enhancements to reporting and task automation for complex loans.
